470 THE TERTIARY FLORA OF AUSTRALIA, 



Although accepted as a fact by some eminent men and adopted 

 in the text books, the evidence is considered altogether inadequate 

 by many others whose opinions command respect, so that it is not 

 improbable that if the follow-my-leader practice were discarded 

 and each writer took the opportunity of judging for himself, there 

 would be a general acknowledgment that the assumptions rest on 

 altogether insufficient grounds. The writers in Zittel's valuable 

 work " Palasophytologie " throw doubt on a 'great many of the 

 determinations of Ettingshausen and his school. It seems to be 

 conceded, indeed, that the existence of Eucalyptus, which most 

 of the specimens do not absolutely prove, receives strong support 

 from the case of E. Geiailzii in the Cretaceous, as leaves, flowers 

 and fruit approximating to those of Eucalyptus have been pro- 

 duced, the fruits indeed separate, but the leaves and flowers on 

 the same stalk. Now, however, we have in Dr. Newberry's posthu- 

 mous work on the Amboy Clays (Monographs U.S. Geol. Survey, 

 Vol. xxvi.) a statement that the author has discovered Heer's fruits 

 of E. Geinitzii in great abundance, that he has no doubt whatever 

 of their being identical with Heer's specimens, and that he has 

 proved them not to be those of any species of Eucalyptus at all, 

 inasmuch as they are flattened, not round as they ought to be if 

 of that genus, and that he has obtained them attached to a core 

 of a cone, evidently that of a conifer (see p. 46 of the work 

 referred to). Clearly the so-called fruits have been improperly 

 assumed to be associated with the leaves and flowers, and without 

 them the value of the evidence is almost nil, for the leaves and 

 flowers might easily belong to something else quite different. 

 According to Zittel's work, the evidence on which the existence 

 in Tertiary times of Casuarina, Leptomeria, Exocarpus, and 

 various Proteaceie rests is equally unreliable. In passing, 

 attention may also be called to the remarkable resemblance that 

 exists between the leaves of certain species of Myrica and those 

 of Banksia and Dryandra. 



It is not to be understood that doubt is thrown on the former 

 existence of a sub-tropical flora in the south of England and even 

 further north, or on the existence of Araucaria and Sequoia in 



