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.