Suggestions upon the Origin of the Australian 



Flora. 



By Spencer Moore, B.Sc, F.L.S. 



Of all the problems which have engaged the attention ot those 

 biologists for whom questions relating to the distribution of life upon 

 our globe have possessed special interest, none has appealed with more 

 fascinating insistence than that one which concerns the stocking of 

 Australia with its animal and vegetable inhabitants. Many are the 

 memoirs wherein this subject is treated either as a whole or in some 

 special and subsidiary aspect. The former method, the method 

 adopted, for instance, with so much brilliancy by Mr. Wallace, is, 

 of course, the more satisfactory one, inasmuch as the same general 

 principles must — due regard being paid to special circumstances in 

 their application to each individual case — have been operative in all 

 departments of both kingdoms of nature. But although only the 

 scantiest reference to zoological problems is made in the following- 

 pages, it is believed that the views maintained in them are in no way 

 discordant with the ascertained facts and recognised deductions of 

 zoology : indeed, were this not the case, the task I have set myself 

 would be a hopeless one. But it is otherwise difficult enough, involv- 

 ing, as it does, rejection of views which have received such weighty 

 advocacy, both here and on the Continent, as has raised or almost 

 raised them into the rank of axioms of science. 



Before explaining my ideas, however, it will be necessary to dwell 

 for a time upon one theory to which general adhesion has been given, 

 in my opinion, without sufficient warrant. Basing their conclusions to 

 some extent on zoological data, and swayed by the bias imparted by 

 those data, botanists have assumed that the Australian flora is of a 

 lower' and less specialised type than that of the northern hemisphere 

 and the tropical regions. It exists to-day, we are told, simply because 

 it has remained isolated from the great land areas of the Old World, 

 and but for this, an exotic flora would have overrun the island- 

 continent as certainly as, without the interposition of the ocean, the 

 Marsupial and Monotrematous fauna would have disappeared before 

 the inroads of higher Mammalia better adapted to the conditions of 



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