7o Voyage of the Novara. 



oftlie colony the fossil remains of various colossal animals 

 have been discovered, vrhich, as since measured, must have 

 stood from 10 to 16 feet in height, and correspond to our 

 diluvial Pachydermata in Europe. In like manner, with 

 tlie exception of some quite insignificant tertiary strata of 

 small extent, only crystalline rocks and primary formations 

 (from the Silurian upwards) form the chief bulk of the con- 

 tinent. The entire series of secondary strata seems to be 

 absent. From this fact it necessarily results that Australia 

 has been a continent since the end of the primary epoch, 

 that it never has been covered by the sea, but remained ever 

 since the beginning of the secondary formations, through all 

 those countless ages during which Europe was being con- 

 vulsed by the most tremendous geological revolutions, a 

 habitable soil, on which plants and beasts, undisturbed by 

 change in the inorganic world, might have continued to 

 flourish down to our own times. Viewed in this light the 

 fauna and flora of Australia would be the most ancient and 

 primitive in the world. 



Another Austrian naturalist, the well-known botanist Pro- 

 fessor Unger of Vienna, has come to tlie same conclusions 

 from the fossil remains of some Australian plants, accom- 

 panied by the further singular deduction, that Europe must 

 have been at one period in much closer accordance with this 

 remote region. Many forms of plants, especially Proteacece^ 

 which at present form such a peculiar feature of its vegeta- 

 tion, seem to have been similarly prevalent in Europe at 



