ture, as is the representation of a good many of the
southern half of certain species of the north, by very closely allied
varieties or species; and, lastly, there is the immense preponderance of
certain genera whose species all run into one another and vary horribly,
and which suggest a rising area. I hear that a whale has been found some
miles inland.

LETTER 373. J.D. HOOKER TO CHARLES DARWIN. Kew, December 14th, 1866.

I do not see how the mountains of New Zealand, S. Australia, and
Tasmania could have been peopled, and [with] so large an extent of
antarctic (373/1. "Introductory Essay to Flora of New Zealand," page xx.
"The plants of the Antarctic islands, which are equally natives of New
Zealand, Tasmania, and Australia, are almost invariably found only
on the lofty mountains of these countries.") forms common to Fuegia,
without some intercommunication. And I have always supposed this was
before the immigration of Asiatic plants into Australia, and of
which plants the temperate and tropical plants of that country may be
considered as altered forms. The presence of so many of these temperate
and cold Australian and New Zealand genera on the top of Kini Balu in
Borneo (under the equator) is an awful staggerer, and demands a very
extended northern distribution of Australian temperate forms. It is
a frightful assumption that the plains of Borneo were covered with a
temperate cold vegetation that was driven up Kini Balu by the returning
cold. Then there is the very distant distribution of a few Australian
types northward to the Philippines, China, and Japan: that is a fearful
and wonderful fact, though, as these plants are New Zealand too for the
most part, the migration northward may have been east of Australia.

LETTER 374. TO J.D. HOOKER. December 24th [1866].

...One word more about the flora derived from supposed Pleistocene
antarctic land requiring land intercommunication. This will depend much,
as it seems to me, upon how far you finally settle whether Azores, Cape
de Verdes, Tristan d'Acunha, Galapagos, Juan Fernandez, etc., etc.,
etc., have all had land intercommunication. If you do not think this
necessary, might not New Zealand, etc., have been stocked during
commencing Glacial period by occasional means from antarctic land? As
for lowlands of Borneo being tenanted by a moderate number of temperate
forms during the Glacial period, so far [is it] from appearing a
"frightful assumption" that I am arrive