INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 37 



" The harvest truh' is plenteous, but the laborers are few." The 

 reasons for this are not far to siek ; they have reference mainly to 

 peculiarities in the geological structure of the continent. 



Monotony and uniformity of animal and vegetable life over 

 extensive areas is a characteristic of Australia, and its geology 

 partakes of it, if indeed it be not a contributing cause. Thus we 

 have a single formation spreading over a wide area — a sheet of rock 

 covering hundreds of square miles. It is on this account thai in 

 an approximate way so much of the geology of Australia has been 

 mapped, as it permits of observations made across one line of 

 country being made applicable to large areas. In England a traA^erse 

 from North Wales to London, which might be rapidly accomplished 

 in a brief vacation, leads the amateur geologist from the base to the 

 top of the geological series ; while in this country months would 

 be required to visit merely the localities of our chief systems, 

 leaving out of consideration the time required to ascertain the 

 mutual relations of the deposits. Thus compactness and variety of 

 geological structure belong to English geology, whereas simplicity 

 and difFusedness are Australian characteristics. Take any one of 

 the chief centres of learning in Australia — how very imperfectly 

 can students be taught in a practical way the law of succession 

 of deposits and of life. Melbourne is the most favorably situated, 

 but what does it offer within easy reach of the student ? Lower 

 Silurian and Upper Silurian, offering very limited opportunities for 

 studying their structure, and none for studying their relationship ; 

 beyond these there are onlj^ isolated areas occupied by Eocene and 

 overlying basalts, the whole constituting a few broken links of a 

 geological chain. 



Another deterrent cause affecting the popularity of the science 

 is the comparative rarity of fossiliferous deposits, or at the least the 

 prevailintc paucity of organic remains. Fossil collecting makes the 

 tyro geologist, and in the absence of this stimulus how can we hope 

 to make geology attractive? Up to the present only a con- 

 spicuous few have been educated in Australia, and the majority of 

 amateur geologists in Australia have brought their zeal and 

 knowledge with them from the home country. The Succession of 

 Life in Australia is a subject which offers a most inviting field for 

 research, and largely concerns the geologist as well as the biologist, 

 because it involves the question of the comparative value of 

 different groups of fossils in marking geological time. In the 

 Pliocene beds of this continent a rich marsupial fauna suddenly 

 sprang into existence, and from that time to the present Australia 



