102 PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS—SECTION D. 
One might hope that at the end of the nineteenth century, 
if not early in the Victorian Era, the objectionable practice of 
describing species simply from New Holland or Australia with- 
out any further details, and without history, would haye be- 
come altogether obsolete. It is a matter for regret that this 
is not the case (w). Is it not within the province of this Section, 
by formal resolution or otherwise, to seek to discountenance a 
custom which a century’s experience has shown to be almost 
certain to bring difficulty in its train? Or might not this Sec- 
tion move the Association to memoralise the International Con- 
gress of Zoologists on the subject?! 
Anyone who will look into early Australian faunistic history 
may find questions in need of consideration from Australian 
zoologists. This Association is the Australasian Federal Parlia- 
ment of Science; and Section D stands for organisation and 
co-operation among Australian biologists. The questions I 
have in mind, in my opinion, are such as might fitly engage 
the attention of this Section. 
One has only to inspect some of our faunal lists—as for 
example Master’s “ Catalogue of Described Coleoptera’”—to see 
that a considerable number of species described by the early 
zoologists have apparently never since been recognised, and con- 
sequently must be unrepresented in Australian collections. Is it 
desirable to know what these amount to; or what the prospects 
of their re-discovery are! 
Correlated with this subject is the question of the old Aus- 
tralian types and type collections. Is it desirable that we should 
have a better knowledge of these matters, as well as of the history 
of the early collectors ? 
The indisputable evidence of a larger Australia than the 
present mainland, which is not altogether hypothetical, is fur- 
nished by a fringe of off-lying islands, many of which were, or 
still are, inhabited by marsupials. The geological epoch in 
which these islands were cut off from the mainland has not yet 
been fully considered in detail. Surely when the time for this 
discussion arrives, the zoological evidence which they ought to 
be able—or to have been able—to afford will be of the very 
greatest value. Except in a few cases the zoology of these 
islands is very imperfectly known—much more imperfectly 
known on the whole than their botany. The way in which the 
fauna of some of these islands has already been punished is 
truly lamentable. Of others the fauna is subject to competi- 
tion from introduced animals on an alarming scale. The Field 
Naturalists’ Club of Victoria has done some excellent work in 
investigating the fauna of King Island, and also of some others 
of the islands in Bass Straits. Mr. A. J. Campbell and Mr. R. 
(w) See for example, Ann. Soc. Ent. de Belgique. T. xlii., 1898, p. 121, &c. 
