BY HENRY DEANE. 475 



even some of the principal natural orders, were already developed 

 in the Jurassic Period ; but have we any right, except on the 

 most convincing evidence, to assume that existing genera had 

 already commenced their career 1 There is no hesitation on the 

 part of some palaeontologists to class remains of plants of Creta- 

 ceous Age under the genera Quercus, Fagus, Acer, Aralia, Cinna- 

 momum, &c, as the case may be; but is it wise to do so 1 It 

 seems to me that the possibility of great changes has been under- 

 estimated. The late Baron von Mueller examined and described 

 a considerable number of fossil fruits from the Pliocene Gold 

 Leads of this Colony and Victoria. Not one of them corresponds 

 with any existing fruit, and the affinities of many of them are 

 exceedingly doubtful. Surely these facts imply change of great 

 amount; and if so much has taken place since the Pliocene, what 

 may not have occurred when the whole Tertiary series is taken 

 into account I 



What, therefore, I wish to suggest is that though the general 

 character of the vegetation may have remained the same for 

 some considerable time past, and though we are dealing in a fossil 

 state with what are no doubt the ancestors of the existing 

 vegetation, we have no right to assume that the ancestor of an oak 

 had in every respect the character of the modern genus Quercus, 

 or that the ancestor of Cinnamomum in the Miocene would if it 

 could be examined be found to correspond with the description 

 of the modern genus Cinnamomum. It might have been the 

 ancestor of three or four other genera as well, and so have some 

 of the characters of each combined. Apart from this, we have 

 the difficulty of determining what existing plant the fossil leaf 

 really resembles; it may resemble those of half-a-dozen plants of 

 widely different groups, and after looking into the matter one 

 must become convinced that it is far safer to give to a fossil a 

 name denoting resemblance rather than to dogmatically state 

 that such a leaf is that of Alnus, Cinnamomum, &c. If Ettings- 

 hausen had contented himself with naming his specimens Alnites, 

 Cinnamomites, &c, the proceeding would have been free from 

 objection, but then the cult of the Cosmopolitan Theory would 

 have received no impetus. 



