Akt. VI. — On some Facts in the Geographical Distribution 

 of Land and Fresh-water Vertebrates in Victoria. 



By A. H. S. Lucas, M.A., B.Se. 



[Eead 8th July, 1896.] 



A part of this paper was prepared for the Melbourne meeting 

 of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 1890, and was read before the Biological Section. As, at that 

 time, certain orders, the Lizards and Batrachians, had not been 

 carefully studied, it seemed better to defer publication until the 

 facts of distribution of these orders had been ascertained. I 

 have since published in the Proceedings of this Society a Census 

 of Victorian Batrachians (1891), and also, in conjunction with 

 Mr. Frost, a Monograph of the Victorian Lizards (1893). I am 

 accordingly now able to present a rnore complete account of the 

 general features of the geographical distribution of Victorian 

 Land and Fresh-water Vertebrates. 



Limited as is its area, the colony of Victoria comprises in its 

 territory a great variety of country. The grass plains of the 

 north, the mallee scrub of the north-west, the rich undulating 

 grazing country of the Western District, the Alps of the North- 

 East, the moist forests of Gippsland, and the Southern District 

 which surrounds Port Phillip, lying between the Otway Ranges 

 and Wilson's Promontory, and comprising but slightly elevated 

 country with moors and swamps and lightly timbered areas, 

 constitute some half dozen well-marked natural divisions. For 

 years Baron von Mueller has been indefatigable in collecting 

 precise records of the occurrence of our native plants in all parts 

 of the colony (as indeed of all parts of our continent), and in his 

 " Key to the System of Victorian Plants " he has published a 

 table of their distribution. The regions which he adopts as a 

 result of his knowledge of the flora are the same as those 



