president's address. 833 



Through the kindness of Mr. R. L. Jack, Government Geologist 

 of Queensland, I have received a number of samples from the 

 Oxley beds, referred to in my Address of last year. The impres- 

 sions are very fragmentary, and thus very difficult to make out. 

 They seem to me as a whole to be rather conspicuous for the scarcity 

 of Eucalypts and Proteads as we know them, a circumstance 

 which, as I have alreadj^ indicated, we need not be at all surprised 

 at. 



Affinities of the South African Flora. 



The Ijelief in the former connection between Australia and 

 South America is continually obtaining more adherents, but the 

 possibility of a land bridge having ever existed between South 

 Africa and Western Australia is treated with much greater 

 incredulit}^ The affinities of the existing floras, however, seem 

 to point to it as the only possible explanation. Strong evidence 

 of a connection in the Carboniferous Period has already been 

 adduced Iw Dr. Blandford and others, on the ground of a common 

 flora, which flourished not only in South Africa and Australia, 

 but in Southern India and South America as well. 



Had we not this evidence from CarlDoniferous times, we must 

 acknowledge that the resemblance between the existing floras of 

 the south-west region of South Africa and that of Australia, and 

 particularly of Western Australia, is too remarkal)le to be 

 accounted for by saying that they are relics of a once cosmo- 

 politan flora, and that their peculiarities have been produced by 

 the selective action of the floral climates. Those botanists who 

 have closely studied them would not be contented with any other 

 explanation than that of actual land connection, or at least of a 

 former tolerably close proximity of the land areas, after the 

 peculiarities of the flora had become developed. Strips of deep 

 sea now separate the two countries, but it does not follow that 

 there was never any land bridge between them. It is certain 

 that parts of the ocean where now there are depths of 1500 

 fathoms have been land in the Miocene- — for example, that from 

 New Zealand northwards. Could we not allow of a local sub- 



