president's address. 639 



Generally speaking, Professor Ettingshausen's theories amount 

 to this, that in Tertiary times, or earlier, there was a universal 

 flora of mixed types, which later on, through the iniiuence of 

 floral climates, became sorted out, so that at the present day 

 distinct regions present distinct peculiarities which at first did not 

 exist. 



That the Australian region has now a flora of its own more 

 marked and peculiar than perhaps that of any other region of the 

 earth's surface will be disputed by none. At first sight this 

 circumstance seems to have a parallel in the existence of types of 

 land mammals, stragglers only of which are to be found elsew-here, 

 and this view is apparently strengthened by the fact that in past 

 ages monotremata and marsupials lived in Europe, while, 

 according to Unger, Heer, Ettingshausen, and a few others, 

 Australian types of plants, Eucalypts, Proteacese, Casuarinese, and 

 many others also flourished. 



The subject is one well worth careful investigation. 

 The monotremata we know first made their appearance in the 

 Northern Hemisphere in the Triassic Age, and marsupials of low 

 type are first found in the beds of the Oolitic (Jurassic) Series. 

 In the rest of the Mesozoic series no animals of higher develop- 

 ment than marsupials have been discovered, but no sooner do 

 we reach the Eocene than it is evident that an enormous 

 advance has been made, for we find ourselves surrounded 

 with animals of much higher type, including the reputed 

 ancestors of the horse, deer, antelope, squirrel, hedgehog, 

 bear and others. Many remarkable animals existed also of 

 types that have long died out. Searching upwards through the 

 Oligocene, Miocene, and Pliocene, and continuing into the 

 Pleistocene we find, as the meaning of those names implies, more 

 and more resemblance to the animals noAv living outside the Austra- 

 lian region, while at the same time we still keep sight of a few 

 marsupials having affinities to the American opossum. This 

 progression of types is utterly wanting so far as has been 

 discovered in Australian strata, and it is only in the Pliocene beds 

 that we first come upon undoubted proof of the existence of 



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