INAUGUKAL ADDRESS. 35 



there are remnants of a Cretaceous fauna in our Eocene, which are 

 not derived from an endemic source, but are migrants from the 

 EurojDean or Asiatic area, and altogether it appears to be older 

 than that of its representative in the Northern Hemisphere, 

 Avhilst there is reason for the belief that the terrestrial equivalents 

 may be synchronous with some portion of the " Desert Sandstone," 

 which in part has yielded a much impoverished Cretaceous fauna. 



The attempts to bring the order of succession of the Australian 

 stratified deposits in unison with that of the country in which so 

 many of the geologists have gained their early impressions have at 

 no time been satisfactory, and the difficulties are daily increasing. 

 Even at an early period of our geological history there had been 

 grasped the important idea that the geology of the typical area of 

 Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous of Europe was not exactly 

 comparable with that of Australia. This is indicated by the 

 hesitancy on the part of authors to assign a given group of 

 fossils to a definite epoch, and by the discordant results arrived 

 at when the age has been the subject under consideration. 



Despite the desire to cling to home associations, I think the 

 time is fast approaching when it will be deemed advisable to found 

 an independent school for Australian Stratigraphy. But before a 

 complete revision of the chronological sequence of our rocks can 

 be undertaken much stratigraphical and palseontological research 

 will have to be brought within some measurable distance of finality. 

 Nevertheless, may it not be possible to make a beginning on what is 

 fairly well known ? May we not decide to use such terms as 

 Eocene and Pliocene, which, as expressions of the relative degrees 

 of antiqiiity of their faunas, measured by the proportion of living 

 species, do not commit us to the idea of correlation with divisions 

 of similar denominations elsewhere '? But the employment of the 

 time word Cretaceous conveys the idea of specific community 

 between the Australian deposits so named and their supposed 

 exoteric equivalents, which barely exists, or at least only under such 

 modification as to be uudefinable. Such a term as Penno- Carboni- 

 ferous is good up to a certain point, but it does not embrace what 

 may be called the idiosyncrasies of its palaeontology, and therefore, 

 like Cretaceo-Eocene and other similar terms, is misleading, and 

 must be regarded as of no permanent value. Mr. R. M. Johnston 

 writes : — * " We must be content to work out the true association 

 of local stratigraphy and local biology unimpeded by references to 

 such associations elsewhere ; we must establish the relationship 



• Aust. Assoc. Adv. Science, vol. i., p. 309. 



