INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 39 



when the necessary talent is wanting should we employ external 

 aid. I think that it is only necessary to call attention to the 

 existence of the evil, and appeal to the sense of justice and 

 patriotism, to bring about the removal of an active cause inimical 

 to palseontological progress. Palaeontology in Australia has made 

 great advances during the last twenty years, as witness the 

 " Decades " issued by the Geological Department of Victoria, the 

 various " Memoirs " by that of New South Wales, and the numerous 

 contributions to several of our scientific societies. 



ANTIQUITY OF CONTINENTAL AUSTRALIA. 



It is a general impression that Australia is a very old continent. 

 Undoubtedly it is, because it presents a range of the geological 

 record equal to that of other continental masses. But this impres- 

 sion is based on illogical deduction, derived solely from the fact that 

 certain characteristic types of the Jurassic fauna of the Northern 

 Hemisphere still linger in the Australian area, such as trigonia, 

 ceratodus, and marsupials among animals, c/yc«f/5 and certain conifers 

 among plants. But the physiographic aspects of Australia have 

 not always been absolutely continental. Since Upper Devonian 

 times there have always been land surfaces, at any rate in Eastern 

 Australia, where there was partial interruption to an absolute con- 

 tinuity (and the area locally affected is not relatively great) during 

 the deposition of the Carboniferous series, which is, however, 

 in a large measure littoral. It may safely be asserted that Australia, 

 certainly so far back as the deposition of the extensive marine 

 Cretaceous occupying the low level tracts of the interior, j^resented 

 the aspect of a vast archipelago. At the close of that epoch, the 

 various insular masses became welded together, so that the antiquity 

 of Australia as a whole is only Post-Cretaceous. In early Eocene or 

 late Cretaceous times the flora was of a cosmopolitan type, consist- 

 ing of an admixture of generic forms, some of which are now 

 proper to the temperate and sub-temperate parts of the Northern 

 Hemisphere, such as oaks, birch, alder, &c., and others exclusively 

 Australian, such as eucalypti, banksias, araucarias, &c. The 

 differentiation of the Australian flora has therefore been brought 

 about during Post-Eocene times. 



Inferences as to the antiquity of Australia, drawn from its almost 

 exclusive marsupial types, are erroneous, because there is every 

 reason to doubt the correctness of the statement, thereby implied, 

 that marsupials originated in Australia. Despite the recurrences 

 of land surfaces from late Palaeozoic limes to the present day, and 



