PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 167 
the globe, and there may have been a closer approach to 
uniformity in the plants and animals of widely separated 
localities, but it may be safely said that identity never 
existed. . Here in Australia we are at the Antipodes of all 
che. well-worked formations of the world, and more and more 
clearly. as detailed work is pushed on, do the differences 
appear. At first it was customary to ascribe almost all 
our fossils, from Paleozoic to Tertiary, to European forms ; 
but, with the growth: of collections, the distinctions between 
allied forms are being elucidated. 
M'Coy, in 1861 (M‘Coy, ’61, p. 162), says—‘ Confining 
ourselves to the details, now first made known: of the com 
tents of the graptolite beds, we have the astonishing fact 
of the specific identity of the marine fauna over the whole 
world during the most ancient paleozoic period.” And, 
further on, “‘ We can point now for the first time to the 
marvellous fact of the specific identity of the inhabicants of 
the seas of the most widely distant points of the northern 
and southern hemispheres during this second great geologi- 
cal epoch of the zoological history of the earth” [z.e., the 
Upper Silurian of the Victorian Survey.] In the same 
essay, in a less sweeping way, he extends this view so as to 
comprise the more recent periods. In this connection it 
“must be remembered that M‘Coy arrived at this conclusion 
when he was fresh from the study of the Paleozoic fossils 
of Britain, and possibly, had he waited till more perfect 
material was obtained. he would not have put forward this 
idea, which, however, he never relinquished. 
De Koninck (de Koninck, 798, p. 2) says M‘Coy “has not 
hesitated to admit the general specific identity of the marine 
fauna of the two hemispheres in the early times of the 
Paleozoic Era. My own observations enable me to con- 
firm” this. ‘I may add, as well, that I arrive at the same 
conclusions, asfar asthe: Devonian and Carboniferous systems 
are concerned.” However. it cannot be said that. subsequent 
work has confirmed this; and Etheridge points out (Ether- 
idge, “91, p. 125)—‘‘No service can be rendered to 
Australian stratigraphical geology by the definite reference 
of any of its fossils to European species, unless on the clearest 
possible evidence.” The Clarke collection, on which de 
Koninck founded his generalisation, was destroyed by fire, 
so that we have no means of checking his records in detail ; 
but Etheridge has suggested, in the descriptions of many 
new species, gathered from the same localities as Clarke's 
fossils, that the supposed identities were frequently mere 
