Permanence of Continents and Oceans

Abstract

MANY naturalists are accustomed, in lecturing, to speak of the existing ocean basins as “permanent.” Though this must to a large extent be a true statement, many geologists at all events must be perfectly aware that the former distribution of life requires that nearly all lands, however remote at present, must have been, perhaps more than once, in connection with each other. Tropical South America is perhaps the most isolated continental province now existing. I would ask these naturalists to explain how its species of tropical genera not peculiar to it got there, and how many of them came to be represented in Europe in Tertiary times.