Pliocene Terllar;/.] PALEONTOLOGY OF VICTORIA. [Plants. 



Plate XXXIX., Figs. 1-4. 

 EUCALYPTUS PLUTI (McCoy). 



[Genua EUCALYPTUS (Lher.). Class Dicotyledonae. Sc. Calyciflorse. Order Myrtaces.) 

 Gen. CAar.— Leares in young saplings usually horizontal, opposite, sessile, and cordate at 

 base ; in the adult usually vertical, alternate, petiolate, broadly ovate to lanceolate, acuminate 

 and falcate ; always rigid, penuiveined, midrib conspicuous ; primary veins often Indistinct in 

 thick leaves ; few irregular, oblique, and anastomosing, or numerous parallel, diverging or trans- 

 verse, but always converging into an intramarginal vein ; intermediate reticulate veinlets 

 indistinct, nearly absent when the primary veins are closely parallel. (Other characters omitted 

 as not seen in our fossil.)] 



Description. — Leaves usually about 5 or G inches long and 10 lines wide, fal- 

 cate, acuminate, rapidly tapering near the petiolate base ; substance thick ; veins 

 delicate, numerous, oblique, subparallel, with rather few branches, or anastomosis ; 

 intramarginal one moderately close to the edge. 



The foliage of this species is almost identical iu size and shape 

 with that of the living Eucalyptus globulus, bvit the veins are much 

 more numerous, straighter, or less flexuous, and more nearly parallel 

 in the fossil than in the living analogue. In both, the old leaves are 

 nan-ow and falcate, while, in the fossil, as in the Hving type, the 

 young leaves are broader and more ovate, with more loosely 

 branching veins. 



With the exception of two or three in the Indian Archipelago, all 

 the multitudinous species oi Eucalyptus are Australian, and form the 

 preponderating characteristic of the scrub and forest vegetations 

 of the country. The absence of Eucalyptus in our Victorian 

 Miocene Tertiary clay beds, and its occurrence, now made unmis- 

 takably known, in the more recent Pliocene Tertiary strata, is a fact 

 of the highest geological interest, although in accordance with the 

 general law of the near resemblance of Pliocene and Plistocene 

 Tertiary fossils to the prevailing type of structure now living in the 

 same countiies, and therefore to be expected. 



As this species is at present only known in the beds associated 

 with the gold leads or Tertiary gold drift deposits, I have dedicated 



[29] 



