64 THE ORIGIN OF AUSTRALIA 
flora. Throughout this long era Australia was clothed 
with vegetation in which the oak (Quercus), the beech 
(Fagus), the elm (Ulmus) and the willow (Salix), and many 
another plant known to the dweller in temperate Europe 
and North America, took important roles. The climate 
must have been favourable to them. That it changed for 
the worse is proven without possibility of mistake, by the 
fact that they succumbed as the climate grew hotter and 
drier, and are no longer to be found in our native woods. 
The predominating feature of our Australian forests (except 
the true scrub, of which more hereafter), 1s the sombre 
Eucalyptus, the leaf-starved, phylloid-bearing Wattle 
(Acacia), and the leafless Casuarmma—it is a_shadeless 
forest. 
33. On the other hand, the Tertiary forest was like the 
Forest of Arden or the BOhmer Wald, or the woodlands of 
Canada and the United States, full of umbrageous trees. 
There could have been no monotonous and tantalisingly 
impenetrable Mulga Scrub of thick-set bushy Eucalyptus; 
none of the dread Malee Scrub of prickly dwarf Acacia ; 
still less was there the heart-rending Spimifex, covering 
hundreds of miles at a stretch with fixed bayonets of Triodia. 
The plains of the old lands were flower-decked savannahs, 
its lagoons were overhung with tree and bush whose deciduous 
leaves still he in the fine ripple-marked silts that mark the 
old sites. A greater contrast between then and now can 
hardly be imagined. The deterioration of the Austrahan 
climate is no fancy of the philosopher : it is a truth stamped 
upon the rocks for all to read that list. 
IV. THE IMPERFECTION OF THE GEOLOGICAL 
RECORD. 
34. In the days when Darwin and Lyell wrote, the 
imperfection of the geological record could always be ap- 
pealed to when evidence was not forthcoming. Even to 
this day some writers look to it in support of their views, 
as if it were some holy thing, some sacred mystic formula 
and specific, to be used in every emergency, and accepted 
as final, and without comment. Yet it is only an expession 
of ignorance, and its weight diminishes with every new 
discovery. 
