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as is well known, fo.=53ils of the earlier periods are common to 

 the whole world. In tertiarj^ palaeontology it is different. 

 Geographical provinces for molkiscan life are as distinct, or nearly 

 as distinct, as the}' are now. It thus happened that what was 

 done on the East Coast was no help whatever to rai^e the veil 

 from the Geology of the South Coast, and our southern Geolog}- 

 remained a sealed book until recently. Even now only a few 

 Xiages have been discovered. It has been my good fortune to l)o 

 connected a good deal with the development of our Australian 

 Geologj'. I have thought it might not be unbecoming in me to 

 relate in this address some facts connected with its histor3\ 

 Though they belong to personal experience, they are the j^roperty 

 of our scientific history as well, and I do not think I overrate 

 their interest by recording them here. In 1855 I first saw some 

 of the tertiar}' fossils of South Australia. They were parti}' a 

 collection from the Eiver Murray, and what I saw dail}' exposed 

 in the limestone quarries near Government House in Adelaide. 

 No one could tell me much about them. I was referred to the 

 narrative of Sturt's journey down the Hiver Murray in 1830. In 

 those delightful volumes I found two lithographic plates of fossils 

 taken from the Eiver Murray. Beyond this there was no 

 information to be had. An attempt had been made b}' Captain 

 Sturt to identify some of the fossils with European tertiary remains 

 but the identifications were all incorrect except in the genera. 

 The only beds I had seen were the limestones at the quarries just 

 mentioned. Fossils were plentiful in them, but they have been 

 now nearly all removed. It was some months before I could 

 examine other beds. These were the limestone cliifs at Mount 

 Gambler and Mosquito Plains, where sections continually occur 

 in caves and extinct craters over hundreds of square miles. The 

 whole of the stone exposed is one mass of fossils. I can scarcely 

 describe my surprise when I first came to examine these rocks 

 closely. Shells are not numerous, but the rock for 100 feet or 

 more is made up of minute organisms — bryozoa for the most part, 



