312 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION D. 



Section D.— BIOLOGY. 



President of the Section: Raljyh Tate, F.L.S., F.G.S., Professor of 

 Natural Science in the University of Adelaide. 



Wednesday, August 29. 

 The President delivered the following Address : — 



ON THE INFLUENCE OF PHYSIOGRAPHIC CHANGES 

 IN THE DISTRIBUTION OF LIFE IN AUSTRALIA. 



Custom has sanctioned for occasions like the present, a review of 

 the history of the progress of our knowledge on some branch of 

 study, or an exposition of marked advances in some line of 

 research, but it has also permitted a broad and comprehensive 

 survey of a phenomenon, or group of phenomena, which sum- 

 marises results rather than submits details of proof. To conform 

 with usage and to confine myself within the limits of our Science 

 have been difiiculties that were not discovered till too late to 

 withdraw from my position ; however, my theme, " The Influence 

 of Physiographic Changes in the Disti'ibution of Life in Aus- 

 tralia," fulfils the prescribed conditions, but how far my treat- 

 ment of the subject comes up to the requirements expected from 

 the occupant of this Chair is for you to judge. The subject 

 especially concerns us as biologists in Australia ; and it moreover 

 admits of development on so many subordinate lines of investi- 

 gation, that I am hopeful to awaken some little enthusiasm in 

 respect of it. 



1 have partly been led to this selection through the following 

 statement made by Baron Sir F. von Mueller : — " To draw the 

 species into physiographic and regional complexes must be the 

 work of future periods, when climatic and geologic circumstances 

 thi'oughout Australia shall have become more extensively known."* 

 I propose to make a beginning in the direction indicated by the 

 foregoing citation, which of necessity concerns the geologist equally 

 well as the botanist ; believing, that however crude and imperfect 

 our first efforts may be, they may nevertheless incite to further 

 enquiry into all the circumstances involved and thereby advance 

 to the attainment of our object more rapidly than if we permit 

 the subject to be dormant until the said circumstances have been 

 fully mastered independently. 



* Systematic Census of Australian Plants, 1882, p. 8. 



