648 president's address. 



the existence through long periods of geological time of large areas 

 of land surface, and the discovery of dicotyledonous plant remains 

 in the Ipswich Coal Measures containing types similar to those 

 existing in Australia at the present day and the absence of any 

 such fossils of corresponding age in the northern hemisphere point 

 to the same conclusion. It seems highly probable that we have 

 in store for us a series of most interesting discoveries whereby we 

 may have revealed the primitive types of the Angiosperms and be 

 able to trace at any rate their ancestry some considerable way 

 back. 



In the Journal of Botany, 1865, there is a translation by Seemann 

 of a remarkable and sensational address delivered in 1861 by 

 Professor linger of the University of Vienna to his students, 

 entitled "New Holland in Europe." In this address linger gives 

 an account of the supposed identity of a portion of the European 

 Eocene flora with the existing flora of Australia. This was the 

 first clear exposition of a theory which has found favour with 

 certain European Botanists, although strongly contested by others. 



Wesel and Weber had some years before this written a paper 

 on the vegetable remains from the brown coal of the Rhine, and 

 an abstract will be found in the Quarterly Journal of the Geo- 

 logical Society, Vol. XY. Hooker in a note on this subject in the 

 Introduction to the "Flora of Tasmania" says: — "The Australian 

 genera include Eucalyptus, Casuarina, Templetonia, Banksia, 

 Dryandra and Hakea. I am not prepared to assert that these 

 identifications or the Australian ones of the Mollasse are all so 

 unsatisfactory that the evidence of Australian types in the brown 

 coal and Mollasse should be altogether set aside; but I do consider 

 that not one of the above-named genera is identified at all satis- 

 factorily, and that many of them are not even problematically 

 decided." 



linger begins his address by contrasting life at the present day 

 in Australia with that of Europe, pointing out that in the one you 

 have the lowest types of mammals and the lowest types of man 

 as compared with the highest orders of mammals and the highest 

 civilized man in the other, and then enters into a diatribe against 



