^!g2i''] Chapman, Geological History Australian Plants. 127 



A SKETCH OF THE GEOLOGICAL HISTORY OF AUS- 

 TRALIAN PLANTS : THE CAINOZOIC FLORA. 



By Frederick Chapman, A.L.S., &c.. Palaeontologist to the 

 National Museum, Melbourne. 



(With three plates.) 



(^Read before the Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, iT,th Dec, 1920.) 

 {Continued from page 119.) 



New South Wales Flora of Tertiary Age. — ^This has been chiefly 

 described by Ettingshausen.* In most cases the determinations 

 arc based on a comparison with living Austrahan types of 

 leaves, but others are referred to types of the European flora, 

 and these have been generally questioned by Henry Deane.f 

 An older Tertiary flora, probably Miocene in age, occurs in 

 the leaf- beds in ferruginous sandstone and clay at Dalton, 

 near Gunning, New South Wales. Ferns are represented by 

 Pteris Humei, and there are also generic forms referable to 

 Fagus, Cinnamomum, Apocynophyllum, Pittpsporum, and 

 Fucalyphis. Besides these, Ettingshausen described other 

 genera of extra-Austrahan types, but, as Deane has already 

 pointed out, there is a strong element of doubt concerning their 

 true affinities, and some revisional work upon them appears to 

 be required. It may here, however, be pointed out that the 

 flora, as a whole, one of the richest Tertiary assemblages, bears 

 a singular hkeness to that of the " brush " type of vegetation 

 seen at Berwick and Maddingley, in Victoria. 



The Deep Leads of Vegetable Creek and Elsmore, New South 

 Wales, contain a flora in part as old as the Berwick facies, such 

 forms as Eucalyptus Houtmanni, E. Mitchelli, and Fagus 

 Mueller i apparently being common to both.} 



At the Warrambungle Mountains there is a diatomaceous 

 deposit interbedded with trachytic tuff containing leaves of 

 Cinnamomum Leichhardti, Ett., determined by W. S. Dun, 

 whilst Deane has described quite a number of leaves of the 

 Older Tertiary type, § referred to the genera Cryplocarya, 

 Endiandra, Anopierus, Eyonsiccphyllum, Coprosmccphyllum, and 

 Grevillea, together with a fern, Pteris abbrcviata. 



Queensland Plant-Beds of Early or Middle Tertiary Age. — 



* " ("ontrilmtions to the Tertiary Flora of Australia," Mem. Gcol. 

 Surv. N.S.W. : Pahcont., No. 2, 1888 (translated from Denkschr. Math.- 

 Naturw. k. Akad. Wi.ss. Wien, 1886, vol. liii.) 



t Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S. Wales, 1900, pp. 463-475 ; il)id., 1901, pp. 

 581-590. 



\ See Kttingshauscn's Memoir above quoted, part 2. 



§ Records Geol. Surv. N.S. Wales, vol. vii., part 3, 1903, p. 231 ; and 

 vol. viii., part 3, 1907, p. 187. 



