688 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ever quite correct until you have contradicted in minute detail 

 about two thirds of it. 



In the first place there are a good many modern elements in 

 the indigenous population of Australia ; but then they are ele- 

 ments of the stray and casual sort one always finds even in remote 

 oceanic islands. They are waifs wafted by accident from other 

 places. For example, the fl^ora is by no means exclusively an an- 

 cient flora, for a considerable number of seeds and fruits and 

 spores of ferns always get blown by the wind, or washed by the 

 sea, or carried on the feet or feathers of birds, from one part of 

 the world to another. In all these various ways, no doubt, modern 

 plants from the Asiatic region have invaded Australia at difi:erent 

 times, and altered to some extent the character and aspect of its 

 original native vegetation. Nevertheless, even in the matter of 

 its plants and trees, Australia must still be considered a very old- 

 fashioned and stick-in-the-mud continent. The strange puzzle- 

 monkeys, the quaint- jointed casuarinas (like horse-tails grown into 

 big willows), and the park-like forests of blue-gum trees, with 

 their smooth stems robbed of their outer bark, impart a marvel- 

 ously antiquated and unfamiliar tone to the general appearance of 

 Australian woodland. All these types belong by birth to classes 

 long since extinct in the larger continents. The scrub shows no 

 turfy greensward; grasses, which elsewhere carpet the ground, 

 were almost unknown till introduced from Europe ; in the wild 

 lands, bushes and undershrubs of ancient aspect cover the soil, 

 remarkable for their stifle, dry, wiry foliage, their vertically instead 

 of horizontally flattened leaves, and their general dead blue-green 

 or glaucous color. Altogether, the vegetation itself, though it 

 contains a few more modern forms than the animal world, is still 

 essentially antique in type, a strange survival from the forgotten 

 flora of the chalk age, the oolite, and even the lias. 



Again, to winged animals, such as birds and bats and flying 

 insects, the ocean forms far less of a barrier than it does to quad- 

 rupeds, to reptiles, and to fresh-water fishes. Hence Australia has, 

 to some extent, been invaded by later types of birds and other fly- 

 ing creatures, who live on there side by side with the ancient ani- 

 mals of the Secondary pattern. Warblers, thrushes, fly-catchers, 

 shrikes, and crows must all be comparatively recent immigrants 

 from the Asiatic mainland. Even in this respect, however, the 

 Australian life-region still bears an antiquated and undeveloped 

 aspect. Nowhere else in the world do we find those very oldest 

 types of birds represented by the cassowaries, the emus, and the 

 mooruk of New Britain. The extreme term in this exceedingly 

 ancient set of creatures is given us by the wingless bird, the 

 apteryx or kiwi of New Zealand, whose feathers nearly resemble 

 hair, and whose grotesque appearance makes it as much a wonder 



