Page:The origin of continents and oceans - Wegener, tr. Skerl - 1924.djvu/110

84 across the Atlantic Ocean. It is concluded from this that in the immediate past a shallow water connection has existed between West Africa and South America, probably along the northern border of the South Atlantic” (Stromer).

Naturally all these arguments are those which are also used by the advocates of the hypothesis of submerged connecting continents. But the displacement theory offers a simpler solution from the purely biological standpoint as well, because it adduces, in explanation of the distribution of plants and animals, not only a land connection, but also variations in distance of the continents concerned. The island of Juan Fernandez is, perhaps, of especial interest in this connection. According to Skottsberg, it does not show any affinities botanically with the closely adjacent coast of Chile, but only with Tierra del Fuego (by winds and sea-currents, I suppose!), Antarctica, New Zealand, and the Pacific islands. This fits in excellently with our idea that South America, drifting westwards, has, in recent times, approached it to such an extent, that the difference of floras becomes very startling. The theory of the submerged bridges could not begin to account for this phenomenon.

Likewise, the Hawaian islands have a flora which is most closely related, not to North America, which lies nearest to them, and whence winds and sea-currents arrive, but with the Old World. This appears intelligible if it is borne in mind that in the Miocene, when the North Pole lay in the Bering Straits, Hawai had a geographical latitude of 40 to 50 degrees, and thus lay in the great westerly wind-drift which came