BY SYDNEY B. J. SKERTCHLY. 69 
always able to subdivide our Tertiary deposits with the 
minute accuracy attainable in Europe, and indeed in some 
cases it is still a moot point as to whether certain beds 
should not be relegated to the Upper Cretaceous. But, as 
a tule, it is not difficult to discriminate between Older and 
Newer Tertiary (Hogene and Neogene), and as a matter of 
fact this has only a subsidiary interest in our research. 
Suffice it that we can draw a fairly accurate picture of the 
Tertiary Flora. 
51. When Wallace wrote his ‘‘ Island Life,’ most of 
this evidence was unknown to him—much of it had not 
been published. It is chiefly to the researches of Messrs. 
R. M. Johnston and H. Dean, in our hemsiphere, and the 
Baron v. Ettinghausen in Europe, that our knowledge has 
become so complete, but many others have made valuable 
contributions. 
52. Let us glance at this Tertiary flora, as represented 
from the Arctic regions to New Zealand, in all latitudes and 
all climates. The first thing that strikes us is the singular 
sameness of it all: singular not merely in possessing so 
many closely allied forms, but in being everywhere so 
utterly distinct from the flora of the present time. We look 
upon our Eucalypts, our Grevilleas and our Banksias, 
as strikingly Australian : but they had their representatives 
in Tertiary Europe and America. The oak, the beech, ~ 
the elm, and the willow, are to us smybols of the woods and 
copses of the great Nearctic Region, yet they formed no in- 
considerable proportion of the Tertiary flora of Australia. 
Even if we examine the Tertiary plants of such purely 
tropical places as Borneo, Java and Sumatra, we find it far 
less “‘ tropical’ than now, indeed, if we judge of climate 
by the plant remains we should hardly have guessed that 
these beds belonged to islands that are literally threaded 
upon the Equator. The Tertiary flora of the whole world 
was more uniform than now: and v. Ettinghausen has 
designated this the Universal Tertiary Flora. 
53. That eminent authority thus sums up the case. 
‘“The Tertiary Flora of extra-tropical Australia (he might 
have included tropical also—S.B.J.8.) is as regards character, 
essentially distinct from the present living flora of Aus- 
tralia: nor does it closely resemble, in general, any other 
