AUSTRALIA TO CAPE TOWN BY LAND.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume IV, Issue 171, 27 February 1902, Page 4

AUSTRALIA TO CAPE TOWN BY LAND.

The Lost Antarctic Continent ;

f Had the earth but shrunk in B slightly different manner our Australian volunteers might have reached the Cape by a very different route from that which they actually followed. Modern research shows that Africa, America, and Australia were once all united by a great southern continent, now sunk beneath the ocean. i ])r. Ortmann has mastered the difficult problem of the geology ,of the far south, and his treatise shows that the work previously done by investigators is the reverse of what it should have been. One of the roost, important points is the resemblance between the lower forms of animal life as by fossils. The, earlier stages of evolution agree 'in; the different distiicts, while the higher forms differ. This shews clearly that, Australia and southern South America; were long connected in one land! mass. Embedded in the ancient sea beaches which ere now far inland., both in-Patagonia and Australia, are? ff.ur.d fossil shells which are exactly; alike, proving to the investigator- the continuation of an unbroken coast: line for both continents. But at some' time in she dim past, possibly three; million years ago, the land of the ■southern hemisphere became divided, and we have now South America,) Australia, and the utterly unknownj Antarctic continent. ; There is overwhelming evidence! that the southern part of Africa,! South America, and Australia were] once a prat of the great -Antarctic i continent, and in supporW cf thisj theory v.-e need but note that recent; observations and discoveries havei shown conclusively that the animals} of the three countries, Africa, South! Ameiica, and Australia, are descend-) ants from the same ancestors. «|. would be rather absurd to assume a land bridge directly across the .great expanso of ocean, or to account fori migration by means cf drifting wood! and so forth. # „ •It is noteworthy tha't the islands otj New Zealand were probably not a): part ot the Antarctic continent.