462 LETTEES TO DABWIN, 1843-1859 



Epoch ? Jukes, 1 I find, speculates in his sketch on Australia 

 being two groups of islands ; was your review on Water- 

 house anterior to this ? 2 



Highlands of Abyssinia will not help you to connect the 

 Cape and Australian temperate Floras ; they want all the 

 types common to both and, worse than that, India notably 

 wants them. Proteaceae, Thymeleaceae, Haemodoraceae, 

 Acacia, Eutaceae of closely allied genera (and in some cases 

 species) are jammed up in S.W. Australia and C.B.I. [Central 

 British India] ; add to this Epacrideae (which are mere of 

 Ericeae), and the absence or rarity of Eosaceae, &c., &c., &c., 

 and you have an amount of similarity in the Floras, and 

 dissimilarity to that of Abyssinia and India in the same 

 features that does demand an explanation in any theoretical 

 history of Southern vegetation. 



I still hold to a large Southern Continent characterised 

 by these and the Antarctic types. Perhaps during the 

 Cretaceous and Oolitic periods some of these types existed in 

 the N. Hemisphere also ; hence the Araucaria cones in 

 Oolite, Banksia wood of the sands at Chobham (what age 

 are they ?) and cretaceous fossils supposed to be Proteaceae 

 in Belgium, &c. ??? 



Are the coal and sandstone fossils of Australia Palaeozoic ? 

 and is there in Australia a gap in the Geolog. series between 

 these and modern tertiary beds ? 



I also still regard plant types as older things than animal 

 types. I have a fossil Araucaria cone from the Oolite iden- 

 tical to all appearance with A. excelsa of Norfolk Island, 

 and the Chobham fossil Banksia wood is identical with 

 Tasmanian. I do not suppose specifically in either case, 

 but that such highly organised types should be so similar, 

 indicates a great age for them as types. 



[For Darwin's answer, dated Dec. 24, see C.D. ii. 142.] 



1 Joseph Beete Jukes (1811-69); an admirable field geologist and writer, a 

 pupil of Sedgwick, did pioneer geological work in Newfoundland, 1839-40, and 

 spent four years on H.M.S. Fly as naturalist to the expedition which surveyed 

 N.E. Australia. Keturning to England in 1846, he joined the Geological Survey, 

 and in 1850 became Director of the Irish Survey. His book referred to in the 

 text is A Sketch of the Physical Structure of Australia, 1850. 



a In this unsigned review of A Natural History of the Mammalia, by G. R. 

 Waterhouse, vol. i., in the Annals and Magazine of Nat. Hist., vol. xix., 1847, 

 pp. 53-56, Darwin had speculated on the S.E. and S.W. corners of Australia 

 having existed as two large islands, and only recently been joined. (M.L. i. 

 448.) 



