463 



OBSERVATIONS ON THE TERTIARY FLORA OF 

 AUSTRALIA, WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO 

 ETTINGSHAUSEN'S THEORY OF THE TERTIARY 

 COSMOPOLITAN FLORA. 



By Henry Deane, M.A., F.L.S., &c. 



In ray Presidential Addresses to the Linnean Society of New 

 South Wales for 1896 and 1897 I mentioned that I had devoted 

 some attention to Australian fossil leaves, and I expressed the 

 opinion that Baron von Ettingshausen's naming of the specimens 

 handed over to him from Dalton and Vegetable Creek was not 

 reliable and that his theory of the Tertiary Cosmopolitan Flora 

 had not only not been proved but that the evidence was rather 

 in the direction that each fossil type possessed representatives in 

 the existing Flora of Australia. I have been urged to pursue 

 this matter, and to aid me in my investigations have been kindly 

 furnished with a loan of specimens by Mr. R. Etheridge, Junr., 

 Mr. W. S. Dun and Professor Baldwin Spencer. 



Before undertaking to criticise the work of so eminent a 

 palaeontologist as Baron von Ettingshausen one ought to be very 

 sure of the ground on which one stands, but I have become so 

 thoroughly convinced of the general correctness of the conclusions 

 which I have indicated above, and I have received so much 

 sympathy and encouragement from the gentlemen above men- 

 tioned and from others to whom I have explained the facts as 

 they appear to me, that I have no hesitation in submitting to 

 this Society a paper on the above subject.* 



* See also Prof. Baldwin Spencer in the Summary of the Horn Expedi 

 tion, p. 160. 



