Darwin, however, remained sceptical "about the travelling of plants from the north EXCEPT DURING THE TERTIARY PERIOD." But he added, "such speculations seem to me hardly scientific, seeing how little we know of the old floras." ("Life and Letters", III. page 247.) That in later geological times the south has been the grave of the weakened offspring of the aggressive north can hardly be doubted. But if we look to the Glossopteris flora for the ancestry of Angiosperms during the Secondary period, Darwin's prevision might be justified, though he has given us no clue as to how he arrived at it.
It may be true that technically Darwin was not a botanist. But in two pages of the "Origin" he has given us a masterly explanation of "the relationship, with very little identity, between the productions of North America and Europe." (Pages 333, 334.) He showed that this could be accounted for by their migration southwards from a common area, and he told Wallace that he "doubted much whether the now called Palaearctic and Neartic regions ought to be separated." ("Life and Letters", III. page 230.) Catkin-bearing deciduous trees had long been seen to justify Darwin's doubt: oaks, chestnuts, beeches, hazels, hornbeams, birches, alders, willows and poplars are common both to the Old and New World.
Newton found that the separate regions could not be sustained for birds, and he is now usually followed in uniting them as the Holartic. One feels inclined to say in reading the two pages, as Lord Kelvin did to a correspondent who asked for some further development of one of his papers, It is all there. We have only to apply the principle to previous geological ages to understand why the flora of the Southern United States preserves a Cretaceous facies. Applying it still further we can understand why, when the northern hemisphere gradually cooled through the Tertiary period, the plants of the Eocene "suggest a comparison of the climate and forests with those of the Malay Archipelago and Tropical America."(Clement Reid, "Encycl. Brit." (10th edition), Vol. XXXI. ("Palaeobotany;Tertiary"), page 435.) Writing to Asa Gray in 1856 with respect to the United States flora, Darwin said that "nothing has surprised me more than the greater generic and specific affinity with East Asia than with West America." ("More Letters", I. page 434.) The recent discoveries of a Tulip tree and a Sassafras in China afford fresh illustrations. A few years later Asa Gray found the explanation in both areas being centres of preservation of the Cretaceous flora from a common origin. It is interesting to note that the paper in which this was enunciated at once established his reputation.
In Europe the latitudinal range of the great mountain chains gave the Miocene flora no chance of escape during the Glacial period, and the Mediterranean appears to have equally intercepted the flow of alpine plants to the Atlas. (John Ball in Appendix G, page 438, in "Journal of a Tour in Morocco and the Great Atlas", J.D. Hooker and J. Ball, London, 1878.) In Southern Europe the myrtle, the laurel, the fig and the dwarf-palm are the sole representatives of as many great tropical families. Another great tropical family, the Gesneraceae has left single representatives from the Pyrenees to the Balkans; and in the former a diminutive yam still lingers.
These are only illustrations of the evidence which constantly accumulates and which finds no rational explanation except that which Darwin has given to it.
The theory of southward migration is the key to the interpretation of the geographical distribution of plants. It derived enormous support from the researches of Heer and has now become an accepted commonplace. Saporta in 1888 described the vegetable kingdom as "emigrant pour suivre une direction determinee et marcher du nord au sud, a la recherche de regions et de stations plus favorables, mieux appropriees aux adaptations acquises, a meme que la temperature terrestre perd ses conditions premieres."("Origine Paleontologique des arbres", Paris, 1888, page 28.) If, as is so often the case, the theory now seems to be a priori inevitable, the historian of science will not omit to record that the first germ sprang from the brain of Darwin.
In attempting this sketch of Darwin's influence on Geographical Distribution, I have found it impossible to treat it from an external point of view. His interest in it was unflagging; all I could say became necessarily a record of that interest and could not be detached from it.
He was in more or less intimate touch with everyone who was working at it.
In reading the letters we move amongst great names. With an extraordinary charm of persuasive correspondence he was constantly suggesting, criticising and stimulating. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that from the quiet of his study at Down he was founding and directing a wide-world school.
POSTSCRIPTUM.
