1 88 NATURAL SCIENCE. Sept., 



represented in Central Australia by the Macdonnel, Musgrave, and 

 Everard Ranges ; 3 in Queensland by an extensive area of Palaeozoic 

 schists, extending almost from the Gulf of Carpentaria to beyond 

 Cloncurry, reappearing in the south as the Grey and Stokes Ranges, 4 

 and yet again in New South Wales as the Barrier Range. If 

 allowance be made for denudation, more islands probably then 

 existed than geological maps now indicate. Tertiary fossils from 

 Victoria, N.S.W., and Queensland show as marked an Australian 

 facies as recent plants and animals. Such are the various species of 

 Banhsia from the Lower Miocene. 5 The very characteristically 

 Australian remains preserved in the Darling Downs' deposits cannot, 

 says De Vis, be considered as of later date than Early Pliocene. 6 

 Finally, many genera and species among recent plants and animals 

 essentially Australian are confined to Eastern Australia. Wallace 

 correctly remarks that West Australia is richer than the East in 

 peculiarly Australian plants, but when, as described later, the archaic 

 Queensland flora was submerged and almost extinguished by the 

 Papuan invaders, great numbers of such peculiarly Australian plants 

 must have perished in Eastern Australia. 



More in need of confirmation than the preceding propositions 

 stands the theory that a large tract of the Tasman Sea connecting 

 Australia with New Zealand was upheaved, and when it had served 

 its purpose conveniently, subsided at the close of the Cretaceous. 

 Except about the twentieth parallel, where a bank no deeper than 

 1,300 fathoms connects the Great Barrier Reef with New Caledonia, the 

 shores of Eastern Australia everywhere front deep water of over 2,000 

 fathoms, to the north the abyss of the Coral Sea, to the south that of 

 the Tasman Sea. The geological history of this coast, as opposed to 

 that of New Zealand, indicates great stability ; such a vast elevation 

 and subsequent depression as Wallace demands could scarcely have 

 occurred without leaving signs decipherable by geologists. If the 

 upheaval was local instead of general, it must, to satisfy the theory, 

 have taken place between Bowen and Rockhampton, where the 

 Caledonian Barrier Bank abuts on the Queensland coast. No 

 consequent distortion of the strata appears to have been there 

 observed by local geologists. 



Upon detailed examination, it appears that although the fauna of 

 New Zealand sometimes approximates to that of Queensland, yet it 

 could not have been derived therefrom ; that, in short, the relation 

 is not that of mother and daughter, but that of sisters. An analysis 

 of the Australian land shells shows the range of the operculated forms 



3 V. Streich, Op. cit., p. 80. 



4 Vide sheets 3, 4, and 5 of the Geological Map issued with "The Geology and 

 Palaeontology of Queensland and New Guinea." By R. L. Jack and R. 

 Etheridge, Jun. 



5 Ettingshausen, " Contributions to a Tertiary Flora of Australia," pp. 138-143. 



6 C. W. De Vis, Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W. (2), vol. vi., p. 456. 



