ON SOME VICTORIAN LICHENS I BY JOHN SHIRLEY. B.SC. 55 



It may perhaps be doubted by some of my hearers whether 

 these lowly plants deserve so exhaustive a study ; and it will 

 perhaps not be out of place to give some reasons for the interest 

 I take in them. 



It is known that the flora of a country changes radically in 

 the course of geologic ages ; for instance, in the Miocene age, 

 parts of Switzerland possessed a flora resembling that of Aus- 

 tralia, the Molasse beds containing fossil remains of Banksias, 

 Hakeas, Sparganiums, Cinnamomums, Grevilleas, Persoonias, 

 and species of Smilax, etc., etc. Lowly plants like the lichens 

 may outlive their loftier and nobler flowering allies. It is at least 

 possible, so slow is the growth of many lichens and so unchange- 

 able their character, that a lichen flora may outlive <nany 

 changes in phanerogamic plants. The character of a lichen flora 

 may therefore give a better clue to the source from whence an 

 oceanic island or island continent was peopled with its floral 

 wealth, than the forest trees of the island or region under con- 

 sideration. Much interest has lately been evinced, and much 

 speculation indulged in, concerning a former Antarctic continent. 

 Wallace in his " Island Life," Hutton in his papers on " The 

 Origin of the Fauna and Flora of New Zealand," Forbes in his 

 writings on " Antarctica," and lately our old colleague, Mr, C. 

 Hedley, in his pamphlet, " The Relation of the Fauna and Flora 

 of Australia to that of New Zealand," have dealt most cleverly 

 and exhaustively with various phases of the subject. So far as 

 the lichens of Australia can give their testimony they oft'er a 

 greater proof of an old time and intimate connectio)i with 

 America than with the nearer and more island-joined continent 

 of Asia ; and, though these are mere fractured links in what 

 may yet be a complete chain of evidence, the discovery of the 

 fossil bones of a peccary in Queensland by Mr. C. W. De Vis, 

 and the finding of fossil marsupial remains in Patagonia of an 

 Australian type, are also worth their place in a discussion on the 

 subject. 



More than three-fourths of the lichens in the list appended 

 are found also in America, and two others belong to the genus 

 Acolium, a family of tropical American habitat. A species of 

 this family was first found in Queensland among some lichens 



