No. 3.] WILKINSON — GEOLOGICAL SPECIMENS. 159 



almost as close a resemblance to Australia and New Guinea aa 

 the Western Islands do to Asia." And again — " Australia, 

 -with its dry winds, its open plains, its stony deserts, and its tem- 

 perate climate, produces birds and quadrupeds which are closely 

 related to those inhabiting the hot damp luxuriant forests which 

 everywhere clothe the plains and mountains of New Guinea." 



Baron von Mueller's remarks on some of the Papuan plants 

 collected by Mr. Macleay are also evidence in favour of the 

 former land-connection of New Guiuea with Australia, so that 

 our geological evidence is supported by that of zoology and 

 botany. 



From geological data it is believed that this continent has not 

 been submerged to any great extent, since the Lower Pliocene 

 period ; and we know that it has risen a little since the Upper 

 Pliocene epoch, at least in Victoria, for the lava flows of that 

 age, now forming the Werribee Plains, were submarine flows. 

 And Mr. Daintree, formerly Government Geologist of Queens- 

 land, shows, in his pamphlet on the Geology of Queensland, that 

 little upheaval of this portion of Australia has taken place since 

 the volcanic outbursts of a late Tertiary epoch. Now, it is in 

 the Upper Pliocene or Pleistocene deposits that are found the 

 remains of the gigantic marsupials — Biprotodon, Macropus, 

 Titanotherium, and others ; and, as their allied representa- 

 tives now occupy both Australia and New Guinea, it is not im- 

 probable that those gigantic animals whose bones are found in 

 Northern Queensland, also roamed in both those countries. And 

 further, as the luxuriant vegetation and climatic conditions 

 which we suppose to be favourable for the support of those 

 immense marsupials still exist in New Guinea, is it rash to con- 

 jecture that some of these large creatures may be living there 

 at the present time ? Further researches may prove this. 



I will conclude with the following very apposite extract from 

 Wallace's Malay Archipelago : — 



" From this outline of the subject, it will be evident how im- 

 portant an adjunct natural history is to geology ; not only in 

 interpreting the fragments of extinct animals found in the earth's 

 crust but in determining past changes in the surface which have 

 no geological record. It is certainly a wonderful and unexpected 

 fact, that an accurate knowledge of the distribution of birds and 

 insects should enable us to map out lands and continents which 

 disappeared beneath the ocean long before the earliest traditions 



