1236 president's address. 



Baron von Mueller remarks " the discovery of these organic 

 remains in a far distant tract of country in New South Wales, is 

 not without considerable interest inasmuch as thereby now is 

 shown, that the pristine forests, which have left us these vestiges, 

 were of wide geographical extent." He then modestly adds " we 

 as yet possess no data to reconstruct imaginarily in their integrity 

 these Australian trees of the last of past epochs." 



Having this evidence of the existence of a semi-tropical 

 Flora in south-eastern Austi-alia in the Pliocene period and 

 of its subsequent banishment from this region, it follows that a 

 great change of climate must have supervened in Post Pliocene 

 times. That this change was due to a general lowering of the 

 temperature of the Southern Hemisphere during a glacial epoch 

 seems probable from the arguments already adduced. And an 

 interesting discovery lately made by Mr. R. D. Fitzgerald, F.L.S., 

 Deputy Surveyor General, appears to favor these views I 

 refer to a small pine which has only been found under or close 

 to the Falls at Katoomba on the Blue Mountains, and which has 

 been named by Baron Sir F. von Mueller, Pherosphoera Fitzgeraldi. 

 The cold, shady, constantly wet cliffs adjoining the Falls appear to 

 be its last reti'eat, and there only a very few plants cling to the 

 crevices, their trailing bi-anches taking root in the mud and sphag- 

 num and their glaucous foliage always dripping with spray. It 

 grows about nine feet highandis intermediate between a Lycopodium 

 and a Juniper. The genus is Tasmanian, and there the only other 

 species belongs to the " high Alpine flats." The nearest allied 

 genus Dacrydhim is also Tasmanian but extends to New Zealand, 

 New Caledonia and even the Indian Archipelago. The species 

 found in Tasmania is known as the " Huon Pine." 



But the evidence which Fitzgerald's Pine affords of a former 

 colder climate is perhaps not so conclusive as is that of the animals 

 which have survived from the Pleistocene period. Fntombed with 

 the remains of Diprotodon and of the other extinct animals 

 occur in the Wellington Caves bones of the " Poached Tiger," 

 the " Tasmanian Devil," and of a rat, Mastacomys fuscus — animals 

 which, as Mr. E. P. Ramsay informs me, are now only living in 



