NOTES 3i3 



artesian water long before the bores were sunk from which flow " Queensland's 

 rivers of gold." 



The whole of Queensland is a vast cemetery of fossilised species — on the 

 surface, buried in drifts, or hidden in clays. The plains of the Flinders river 

 disclose great deposits of marine fossil shells, belemnites and ammonites, and 

 remains of extinct animals. In the Gulf of Carpentaria, 40 or 50 feet below the 

 alluvial deposits forming the banks of rivers, firmly embedded in the hard cement — 

 water-worn stones in an ironstone clay — are the bones of innumerable extinct 

 gigantic animals that, far back in some prehistoric age, roamed over the Gulf 

 country : Diprotodon, Nototherium, and Zygomaturus — grass-eaters and flesh- 

 eaters. The utter extinction of these creatures can only be explained by a great 

 change of climate and great and lengthy droughts. The fossils are from animals 

 of immense size ; the teeth found are twice the size of an ordinary bullock's. 

 Gigantic alligators and turtles and marsupials abounded in those days, suggesting 

 a luxuriant and abundant herbage. 



From an economic point of view one may say that three-fourths of the area of 

 Queensland forms good pastoral land. Of this, 60,000 square miles contain 

 valuable mines of gold, with outcrops of copper and lead ores, as well as rich 

 deposits of tin ; 24,000 square miles are capable of producing illimitable supplies 

 of iron and coal. It may be safely asserted that in Queensland is a wealth of 

 material resource comparing favourably with any other part of Australia. 



Pamphlets and Periodicals 



The New East, edited by J. W. Robertson Scott, is a new periodical, written 

 in the English language but published at 12, Ichibeicho Nichome, Azabu, Tokyo, 

 Japan, their London agents being the Far Eastern Advertising Agency, 

 36, Southampton Street, Strand. It is new in every sense— in its aim, in the 

 quantity of ground it covers, and in that it is the first number of a new periodical. 

 It contains, for a very moderate sum, quite an unusual amount of reading matter 

 on a great variety of subjects and appealing to every type of mind, and, unlike 

 most periodicals, it is not a collection of odd articles, but has a constructive 

 purpose which justifies its birth in these days of over-literary production. The 

 Editor says : " The New East has two objects : (1) To interpret to the West the 

 best in the thought and achievement of Japan, and to Japan the best in the thought 

 and achievement of the West. (2) To develop, by better acquaintance between 

 the British and Japanese peoples, the good relations which so happily exist 

 between Japan and Great Britain. The Review has secured the help not only of 

 the best writers of Japan and the Far East, but of those most competent to survey 

 and interpret the thought and progress of Great Britain, India and the Oversea 

 Dominions, the European Continent, the United States and South America." 

 Prof. M. Anesaki explains why a large proportion of the Japanese people is 

 pro- German in spite of the fact that nearly all the leading papers of Japan are 

 anti-German. "There have been two periods in the growth of German influence 

 in Japan," he says ; " the first was consequent upon the defeat of France by 

 Germany in 1870. This induced the Japanese military authorities to adopt the 

 German model in place of the French, which had been followed previously. 

 The second dated from the middle of the eighties, when Prince Ito found the 

 German constitution and jurisprudence the most congenial to Japanese needs." 

 He gives as another reason that " students staying in Germany or officials making 

 tours of investigation could easily get information and insight, more or less, in 

 Germany," while " an English or American school, for instance, could be under- 



