386 NOTES ON NATIVE FLORA OF NEW SOUTH WALES, IV., 



the best available, it is at the same time often so meagre that 

 sufficient comparison cannot be made with living specimens to 

 decide whether or not the fossil and some living plant may not 

 belong to the same species, the result being in many such cases 

 that the fossil is described as a new species. Owing to force of 

 circumstances, therefore, the question of the identity of fossil 

 plants with living species is one that is not satisfactorily investi- 

 gated, and even where differences are noted, the fossil may 

 possibly be in some cases the ancestral form of a living plant. 



In the case of G. Cookii found near Emmaville, the specimen 

 is, according to the drawing, only a fragment of a branchlet, and 

 from its diameter and number of sheath-teeth, there seems prac- 

 tically nothing to differentiate it from C. torulosa, which is 

 flourishing to-day along much of the eastern coast of northern 

 Australia. 



As previously stated (supra) the occurrence of C. stricta in 

 Tasmania as well as on the mainland goes very far to prove its 

 existence while a land-connection extended from the former to 

 Victoria. Dr. A. W. Howitt, who has closely studied the ques- 

 tion of this land-connection, when dealing with the origin of the 

 Aborigines of Tasmania, writes* : — " The commencement of this 

 later connection of Tasmania and Victoria may be provisionally 

 placed in the Pliocene epoch. What may have been its duration 

 it is not possible to state within definite limits; but it may have 

 been as late as the more recent volcanoes of south-western 

 Victoria and the south-eastern district of South Australia." 



Professor Ralph Tatef says of the latter that " they are newer 



than the Pliocene sand and loess which are interstratified between 



the Mount Gambler limestones and the ashbeds of that place. '^ 



. . " Leaves of Casuarina and Banksia are impressed on the 



under surface of the superimposed ash-layer." 



It will therefore be seen that Wilkinson suggests that the 

 subsidence along the coast of New South Wales may have been 



* Presidential Address (Section F. Ethnology and Anthropology)^ 

 Report Aust. Assoc. Adv. Sci. 1898, vii. p. 741. 



t Ann. Address, Trans. Philosophical Soc. Adelaide, 1878-9, p.lxix. 



