Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 147 



receive them shortly. If they arrived safely, he would try 

 them in Queensland. As to the statement that the islands 

 Fraslin, Curieuse, and He Ronde had been considered by 

 General Gordon to be the original Garden of Eden, he 

 thought this was an error. The General had merely specu- 

 lated on the possibility of such having been the case, but 

 had alleged nothing. He had seen and verified the 

 unpublished monograph by General Gordon on the Coco-de- 

 Mer, which was very complete, the General having been an 

 excellent draftsman, and having probably had the assistance, 

 as to the botanical items, of his friend Mr. Scott, of 

 Mauritius, with whom he had lived for some time. 



Mr. Griffiths said that two points had been referred to 

 by Mr. McCrae, which he thought were of same interest. 

 The first had reference to the very limited distribution of 

 the tree, and the second to the geological character and 

 features of the island upon which it was found. Far 

 apart as the two subjects seemed to be, there was a 

 connection between them. It was very singular that the 

 Coco-de-Mer should be found on three islands and 

 nowhere else in the world, and naturally such a fact 

 had given rise to a great deal of speculation ; but they 

 had sufficient knowledge of the geology of the globe 

 to have some idea, at any Tate, of the steps by which 

 such a condition of things had arisen. It was tolerably well 

 established that, during the mesozoic period, there had been 

 a continent in the Indian Ocean. This continent had had 

 a shape which might perhaps be readily represented by a 

 boomerang, and had stretched from the Cape of Good Hope 

 (which was then isolated from the rest of Africa) through 

 Madagascar and the region now represented by the islands 

 Fraslin, Curieuse, and He Ronde, and, possibly, as far north 

 as India. The Southern part of India at that time had been 

 isolated from what is now Asia, and deep seas had rolled 

 where the Himalaya Mountains now stand. It had then 

 turned, answering to the curve of the boomerang, and 

 stretched out to Australia, which at that time consisted of 

 two parts — Western and Eastern Australia, between which 

 was a wide shallow sea, and which were probably cut off 

 from each other more or less completely. The existence of 

 this ancient continent had been suggested by certain features 

 in connection with the distribution of the fauna and flora of 

 the world to-day, and the curious affinities which existed 

 between Western Australia, South Africa, and parts of India. 



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