200 
AUSTRALIAN VEGETATION. 
North American species to be naturalized among us. But this is by 
no means the case. North American plants, however easily grown 
in our gardens, do not show any great disposition to escape from 
cultivation, and drive the native flora off the field. The same is true 
of Australian plants ; and this peculiarity contrasts strangely with the 
extraordinary rapidity with which European plants spread in the 
southern hemisphere, supplanting in New Zealand, New Holland, etc. 
the native vegetation. " Hitherto," says Dr. Hooker, " no consider* 
tion of climate, soil, or circumstance has sufficed to explain this phe- 
nomenon." If what I have traced out, that new arrivals have always 
the advantage over old, be a sound law, it ought to apply to this case 
as well as the others; and to all appearances it does. We know, 
from the researches of Unger and others, that a vegetation very simi- 
lar, not to say absolutely identical, to that of the southern parts of the 
United States, existed in Europe at the Lignite period, and that a 
vegetation very similar, if not absolutely identical, with that of Aus- 
tralia, existed in Europe at the Eocene period. But we have no 
knowledge of the existence of a European Elora in either North Ame- 
rica or in Australia at any former geological periods. Plants from 
Australia and North America would therefore not enjoy in Europe 
the advantage of new-comers, but would Vather be like wanderers re- 
turning to a country where their part has already been played out. 
AUSTRALIAN VEGETATION, INDIGENOUS OR INTRODUCED, 
CONSIDERED ESPECIALLY IN ITS HEARINGS ON THB OC- 
CUPATION OF THE TERRITORY AND WITH A VIEW 
UNFOLDING ITS RESOURCES. 
By Eerdinand Mueller, Ph.D., M.D., F.K.S. 
(Concluded from p. 174.) 
Only in the south-eastern parts of the continent and in Tasmania 
do the mountains rise to alpine elevations. Mount Hotham, 
Victoria, and Mount Kosciusko, in New South Wales, form the cul- 
minating points, each slightly exceeding 7000 feet in height- » 
ravines of these summits lodge perennial glaciers ; at 6000 lee 
remains on the ground for nearly the whole of the year, and snows r ^ 
may occur in these elevations during the midst of summer. 
• 
