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furnished mc with information and facts which illustrate 

 the view I have just laid down, and I shall now avail 

 myself of them somewhat largely. To begin with geology. 

 Though much has been done — and Australia can boast of 

 many scientific geologists whose contributions to science 

 deserve and have obtained the most honourable recognition 

 — still very little is accurately known of the stratigraphical 

 relation of our paleozoic, fossiliferous, carbonaceous, and 

 metalliferous rocks; very few of their fossils have been 

 described ; no good catalogue, I am informed, has been 

 made of those already described. European forms are 

 present ; it would be interesting to know how many, and 

 which? The relation in point of time of our volcanic 

 rocks to the strata in which they exist would be an im- 

 portant object of inquiry. Have we any certainly tertiary 

 basalts ? How many different periods do they represent ? 

 What are their chemical characters ? And do those afford 

 a permanent test for their identification in different 

 localities ? In the mineral kingdom, no catalogue of 

 minerals has been attempted since that of Count Strezlecki, 

 which does not pretend to be complete. Valuable cata- 

 logues have been made in neighbouring colonies, but Tas- 

 mania is altogether behind hand in this particular, and 

 yet, as it is known that gems exist in Tasmania, and her 

 mineral riches are unquestionably very great, this should 

 be a peculiarly interesting object of study to Tasmanians, 

 as it is well known that the occurrence of basalts, green- 

 stones, syenites, and granites — rocks which are common 

 here —must give rise to sapphires, opals, rubies, and pos- 

 sibly even diamonds. In natural history, good observations 

 on the comparative osteology of all our described marsu- 

 pials are much wanted. Year by year observations on 

 their habits will become more difficult to make, and many 

 of the most rare of our fauna will become very scarce, if 

 not extinct, within the space of another generation. Some 

 Tasmanian birds, such as the emu, have become already 

 extinct in this island ; the apterix and the great owl-like 

 night parrot, are following, in New Zealand, the fate of the 

 Dinornis. What an interesting relic of the past would be 

 a memoir of the habits of the Dodo, had some early 

 visitor to the Mauritius spent a few hours in noting 

 and describing them. Observations on the nests, eggs, 

 and migrations of our birds might be made by any clever 

 boy with a taste for ornithology ; any observations would 



