190 Prof. M'Coy on the Recent Zoology 



EADIATA AND PROTOZOA. 

 Of these divisions there are no economically useful kinds 

 known, a few sponges alone having been applied to any useful 

 purpose. 



PALiEONTOLOGY. 



The palaeontology of Victoria and the adjacent parts of Aus- 

 tralia is of very great interest, from the many unsettled scien- 

 tific questions on which it bears. 



POST-PLIOCENE AND PLIOCENE PERIODS. 



The most recent geological period in Victoria, as in Europe, 

 may be illustrated by the remains of bones found in caverns 

 and in the superficial drifts and clays deposited, apparently, at 

 the same time as that at which the caverns became closed. 

 These Pleistocene and newer Pliocene periods are in Victoria, as 

 in Europe, i-emarkably rich in osseous remains of warm-blooded 

 animals, some of which are still inhabitants of the spot ; others 

 still live, but in other counti-ies; and many are extinct — gene- 

 rally of the same type of structure as the more characteristic 

 living animals of the country, but of species frequently immensely 

 superior in size to any that now live — repeating, in fact, in 

 Australia that appearance of gigantic antitypes of the peculiar 

 geographical groups of zoological structure marking the living 

 zoology of the great regions of the earth at the present day. I 

 believe the majority of the so-called alluvial gold-deposits to be 

 of this newer Pliocene period. In the sinkings into the various 

 drifts at the Ballarat gold-fields, remains of timber and the cha- 

 racteristic fruits of the Banksia or " honeysuckle ^'-trees of the 

 colonists are common, and apparently of the species still grow- 

 ing in the vicinity. In the clay-beds leaves are occasionally 

 found in abundance, and perfectly preserved, undistinguishable 

 from the foliage of the common " stringy-bark " tree {Eucalyptus 

 ohliqua) of the neighbouring forests. In these gold-drifts no 

 marine remains have yet been found, and, indeed, few fossils of 

 any kind ; but in some of them (as, for instance in the gold- 

 " cement ^^ of Dunolly) I have found the jaw of a wombat, 

 of the generic type [Phasculomys) so characteristic of the 

 southern part of Australia and the adjacent island of Tasmania, 

 but forming a distinct species {Phascolomys pliocenus, M'Coy), 

 easily distinguished from the three living species of the same 

 size by the greater autero-posterior length of the grinders. In 

 the living and fossil lower jaws, having the same length from 

 the tip of the incisor to the back of the hindermost grinder, 

 the whole grinding series, of one premolar and four molars, only 



