A FOSSIL CONTINENT 89 



still undeveloped and unspecialised lion, long before the 

 extinct dinotheriums and ^'if^antic Irish elks and colossal 

 giraffes of late tertiary times had even begun to run tlieir 

 race on the broad plains of Europe and America, the 

 Australian continent found itself at an early period of its 

 development cut off entirely from all social intercourse with 

 the remainder of our planet, and turned upon itself, like the 

 German philosopher, to evolve its own plants and animals 

 out of its own inner consciousness. The natural conse- 

 quence was that progress in Australia has been absurdly 

 slow, and that the country as a whole has fallen most woe- 

 fully behind the times in all matters pertaining to the 

 existence of life upon its surface. Everybody knows that 

 Australia as a whole is a very peculiar and original con- 

 tinent ; its peculiarity, however, consists, at bottom, for 

 the most part in the fact that it still remains at very nearly 

 the same early point of development which Europe had 

 attained a couple of million years ago or thereabouts. 

 * Advance, Australia,' says the national motto ; and, indeed, 

 it is quite time nowadays that Australia should advance ; 

 for, so far, she has been left out of the running for some 

 four mundane ages or so at a rough computation. 



Example, says the wisdom of our ancestors, is better 

 than precept ; so perhaps, if I take a single example to 

 start with, I shall make the principle I wish to illustrate a 

 trifle clearer to the European comprehension. In Australia, 

 when Cook or Van Diemen first visited it, there were no 

 horses, cows, or sheep ; no rabbits, weasels, or cats ; no 

 indigenous quadrupeds of any sort except the pouched 

 mammals or marsupials, familiarly typified to every one of 

 us by the mamma kangaroo in Regent's Park, who carries 

 the baby kangaroos about with her, neatly deposited in the 

 sac or pouch which nature has provided for them instead 

 of a cradle. To this rough generalisation, to be sure, two 



