42 INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 



excessively hot and dry winds blowing from the same quarter*-', 

 unwittingly committed a similar error to that made by Vancouver 

 and Flinders, and gave support to the notion of an interior 

 lacustrine area by referring the helices and bulimini, buried in the 

 loess of the plateau of the Great Australian Bight, to fresh water 

 shellsf. 



Jukes;}:, though accepting the evidences of the existence of a 

 great sea of low and level land occupying by far the larger portion 

 of Australia, with the hilly districts rising from it like islands, yet 

 rejects the idea of any expanse of water in much the same terms 

 as Eyre used. But he holds the view of a partially submerged 

 continent during the Tertiary period, and attributes the peculiarities 

 in the geographical distribution of our plants and animals to 

 isolation from this geological cause. These speculations of this 

 able geologist are alluded to by Sir J. D. Hooker in his essay 

 on " The Flora of Australia," p. ci., 1859. 



MacGillivray § agrees with the views of those geologists who 

 consider Australia to have formerly appeared as a cluster of islands, 

 which became connected since the Tertiary epoch, so as to form 

 what may now be considered as a continent. 



Sttjkx missed the focus of centx'al depression, though subsequent 

 discoveries proved him to be right as regards the existence of an 

 inland sea, now vastly reduced in area from what it once had been. 

 Eyre, Babbage, and Stuart added largely to ou.r knoAvledge of the 

 extent of the lacustrine areas and desert tracts of Central Australia. 

 During Bui'ke's expedition the limits of Sturt's " stony desert" were 

 proved very little further north than the point reached by him ; 

 whilst the surface features of the country bordering the Lake Eyre 

 basin on the east and north are described by Wills as consisting 

 of : — Stony rises, which are probably formed of the detritus of the 

 sandstone ranges deposited in undulating beds of vast extent; loam 

 flats, which are such an important geological feature in this part of 

 the country ; and sandhills, composed of compactly-set red sand, 

 which in some places have a uniform direction on the average 

 N.N.E. and S.S.W. The Lake Eyre basin remained undelimited 

 till surveyed by J. W. Lewis in 1874-5. 



Duncan, Professor Martin^, by a misreading of the geology,, 

 assumed that the marine Tertiaries " reached far into the interior, 



' Joum. Expeditions, &c., 1845, vol. i., p. 273; Journ. Boy. Geograph. Soc, 1846, xvi., 



pp. 200-211. 



t O}). cit., vol. I., pp. 2?5 and 323. t Physical Structure of Australia, pp. 81, 84, 95. 



§ Voy. of Rattlesnake, vol. ii., p. 355. 1852. 



V Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xxvi., p. 70. 1870. 



