190 PLANTS WHICH HAVE BECOME NATURALIZED IN N. S. W., 



differs from all other cupressineous genera, living as well as 

 bygone." (F. von Mueller in Geological Survey of Victoria). The 

 late eminent Geologist, the Rev. W. B. Clarke, alludes to the Flora 

 of the past in his work on "The Sedimentary Formations of N S. 

 Wales," p. 89, and Mr. Wilkinson the indefatigable Government 

 Geologist and President of the Linnean Society of N. S. Wales, 

 follows up the subject in his late Annual Address, informing us, 

 that the fossil leaves of the Miocene or Eocene period belong to 27 

 species and 21 genera, of which only six of the genera are contained 

 in the living Flora of Australia. Reasoning from these facts, 

 Mr. R. Etheridge, Junr., of the British Museum, concludes, 

 " That the Tertiary Flora of Australia is far more nearly allied to 

 the Tertiary Floras of other Continents than to the living Flora of 

 Australia." Great changes, then, have taken place in the Flora 

 of N. S. Wales in long ages past, and it is equally certain that great 

 changes (though probably from very different causes) are taking 

 place now. On this side of the Dividing Range, the destruction 

 of Eucalypts, the cultivation of the ground with foreign plants, 

 and the naturalisation of 170 species from different parts of the 

 world, have made great inroads on the indigenous Flora, and it is 

 not too visionary to predict, that, in the course of another 

 Century, many of the native plants will exist only in enclosed or 

 remote places ; whilst a mixed Flora, adapted to the altered 

 circumstances of the colony, will usurp the place of the past 

 vegetation. Where Sydney and Parramatta now stand, R. Brown 

 collected many of his specimens, and as it was customary in the early 

 days of the colony, to clear and burn off without reference to the 

 value of the timber, the Eiicalypts of which he speaks as so 

 difficult to classify, have long since passed away from the immediate 

 neighbourhood of these towns. In more recent times, the indis- 

 criminate ring-barking of such trees has extended through the 

 length and breadth of the colony, and, whilst the folly of this 

 policy cannot be too strongly condemned as having some effect on 

 the rainfall and health of the country, it is certain that it is 

 making a great revolution in the Flora. The Rev. J. E. Tenison- 

 Woods, in his very interesting account of Java, tells us that the 



