president's address. 13 



scutes on the back as well as one on the belly, has recently been 

 found living in some of our rivers. 



Equally strange discoveries have been made with respect to 

 shells, the first discovered being the beautiful Trigonia, known 

 for a long time only as a fossil of the Secondary and Tertiary 

 rocks, but this shell was afterwards found alive in Port Jackson 

 and Tasmania. Buckland first pointed out the remarkable fact 

 that these shells, being in their fossil state associated with 

 Cestracion, the same association prevailed in their modern state. 



I will only mention one other instance of survival in Australian 

 waters, namely, that of the curious Brachiopoda, commonly known 

 as '• Lamp Shells," which, in Secondary and Tertiary times, were 

 so abundant as to have formed in some instances thick strata of 

 rock. 



So many discoveries of "living fossils" having been made in 

 Australia, it was not unreasonably expected, by the projectors of 

 the Horn Expedition, that older forms of life than those prevailing 

 elsewhere would be found in the more inaccessible parts of Aus- 

 tralia, such as the McDonnell Ranges, which, being of Silurian 

 age, were supposed to have existed as islands before the rest of 

 the continent had accomplished its final emergence from the 

 ocean; but in this expectation they were disappointed. 



On careful consideration of all the facts which I have stated, 

 I have little doubt that, after Australia had been cut off from 

 the old world, Tasmania and New Guinea were cut off from 

 A ustralia, but, although various changes afterwards took place, 

 there always remained above the ocean, since their arrival, a 

 home for the plants and animals mentioned, which have therefore 

 been able to survive to the present day, while their less fortunate 

 congeners, located in other lands, being cut off" by the submergence 

 of their homes, have perished and left no other record of their 

 former existence than their fossil remains. 



Australia is unique as being the home of so large an array of 

 plants and animals, which have very appropriately been called 

 " Living Fossils," and, for this reason, strengthened by facts 

 which I have mentioned, I cannot doubt that, counting as 



