Well might Darwin, writing to Heer in 1875, say: "Many as have been the wonderful discoveries in Geology during the last half-century, I think none have exceeded in interest your results with respect to the plants which formerly existed in the arctic regions." ("More Letters", II. page 240.)As early as 1848 Debey had described from the Upper Cretaceous rocks of Aix-la-Chapelle Flowering plants of as high a degree of development as those now existing. The fact was commented upon by Hooker ("Introd. Essay to the Flora of Tasmania", page xx.), but its full significance seems to have been scarcely appreciated. For it implied not merely that their evolution must have taken place but the foundations of existing distribution must have been laid in a preceding age. We now know from the discoveries of the last fifty years that the remains of the Neocomian flora occur over an area extending through 30 deg of latitude. The conclusion is irresistible that within this was its centre of distribution and probably of origin.
Darwin was immensely impressed with the outburst on the world of a fully fledged angiospermous vegetation. He warmly approved the brilliant theory of Saporta that this happened "as soon (as) flower-frequenting insects were developed and favoured intercrossing." ("More Letters", II. page 21.)Writing to him in 1877 he says: "Your idea that dicotyledonous plants were not developed in force until sucking insects had been evolved seems to me a splendid one. I am surprised that the idea never occurred to me, but this is always the case when one first hears a new and simple explanation of some mysterious phenomenon." ("Life and Letters", III. page 285.
Substantially the same idea had occurred earlier to F.W.A. Miquel.
Remarking that "sucking insects (Haustellata)...perform in nature the important duty of maintaining the existence of the vegetable kingdom, at least as far as the higher orders are concerned," he points our that "the appearance in great numbers of haustellate insects occurs at and after the Cretaceous epoch, when the plants with pollen and closed carpels (Angiosperms) are found, and acquire little by little the preponderance in the vegetable kingdom." "Archives Neerlandaises", III. (1868). English translation in "Journ. of Bot." 1869, page 101.)Even with this help the abruptness still remains an almost insoluble problem, though a forecast of floral structure is now recognised in some Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous plants. But the gap between this and the structural complexity and diversity of angiosperms is enormous. Darwin thought that the evolution might have been accomplished during a period of prolonged isolation. Writing to Hooker (1881) he says: "Nothing is more extraordinary in the history of the Vegetable Kingdom, as it seems to me, than the APPARENTLY very sudden or abrupt development of the higher plants.
I have sometimes speculated whether there did not exist somewhere during long ages an extremely isolated continent, perhaps near the South Pole."("Life and Letters", III. page 248.)
The present trend of evidence is, however, all in favour of a northern origin for flowering plants, and we can only appeal to the imperfection of the geological record as a last resource to extricate us from the difficulty of tracing the process. But Darwin's instinct that at some time or other the southern hemisphere had played an important part in the evolution of the vegetable kingdom did not mislead him. Nothing probably would have given him greater satisfaction than the masterly summary in which Seward has brought together the evidence for the origin of the Glossopteris flora in Gondwana land.
"A vast continental area, of which remnants are preserved in Australia, South Africa and South America...A tract of enormous extent occupying an area, part of which has since given place to a southern ocean, while detached masses persist as portions of more modern continents, which have enabled us to read in their fossil plants and ice-scratched boulders the records of a lost continent, in which the Mesozoic vegetation of the northern continent had its birth." ("Encycl. Brit." (10th edition 1902), Vol. XXXI. ("Palaeobotany; Mesozoic"), page 422.) Darwin would probably have demurred on physical grounds to the extent of the continent, and preferred to account for the transoceanic distribution of its flora by the same means which must have accomplished it on land.
It must in fairness be added that Guppy's later views give some support to the conjectural existence of the "lost continent." "The distribution of the genus Dammara" (Agathis) led him to modify his earlier conclusions. He tells us:--"In my volume on the geology of Vanua Levu it was shown that the Tertiary period was an age of submergence in the Western Pacific, and a disbelief in any previous continental condition was expressed. My later view is more in accordance with that of Wichmann, who, on geological grounds, contended that the islands of the Western Pacific were in a continental condition during the Palaeozoic and Mesozoic periods, and that their submergence and subsequent emergence took place in Tertiary times."(Guppy, op. cit. II. page 304.)
The weight of the geological evidence I am unable to scrutinise. But though I must admit the possibility of some unconscious bias in my own mind on the subject, I am impressed with the fact that the known distribution of the Glossopteris flora in the southern hemisphere is precisely paralleled by that of Proteaceae and Restiaceae in it at the present time. It is not unreasonable to suppose that both phenomena, so similar, may admit of the same explanation. I confess it would not surprise me if fresh discoveries in the distribution of the Glossopteris flora were to point to the possibility of its also having migrated southwards from a centre of origin in the northern hemisphere.
