138 Prof. F. M‘Coy on the Ancient and Recent 
Australia generally, and of the Myrmecobius of South Australia 
particularly—such types of general structure of insectivorous 
Marsupialia existing nowhere now on the face of the earth except 
in Australia; and these fossil bones near Oxford are accompanied 
by myriads of marine shells of the genus Trigontia—a genus not 
now existing in any other than the Australian seas, where four 
species of it are not uncommon. Such facts are very commonly 
received as indicating a continuance to the present day in Au- 
stralia of the fauna which disappeared in all the rest of the world 
with the close of the Mesozoic period; and this again carries 
with it the belief that Australia was the most ancient country in 
existence, having remained as dry land above the level of the sea 
for a period corresponding to that in which all the Mesozoic and 
Cainozoic formations of the rest of the world were being depo- 
sited. I am enabled to state that there is no sufficient founda- 
tion for this theory, from the great quantity of fossils which I 
have lately examined as Palzontologist to the Geological Survey 
of Victoria; and from evidence of this kind I can offer a sketch 
of the ancient successive changes of organic life in this country. 
Paleozoic Period. 
The Azoic rocks, I can now state, were succeeded in Victoria, 
exactly as in Wales, Sweden, North America, and other parts of 
the world in the northern hemisphere, by a series of rocks en- 
closing fossil remains of the well-known genera and even specific 
types of animal life characterizing those most ancient fossiliferous 
strata termed Lower Silurian by Sir R. Murchison, and Cambrian 
by Professor Sedgwick. In the slates, north of Melbourne, 
containing the auriferous quartz-veins of the gold-fields, I have 
recognized abundance of the double Graptolites for which I 
formerly proposed the genus Diplograpsus, so characteristic of 
strata of this age; and, what is curious, I have found of this 
genus no peculiar or new species, but, on the contrary, the iden- 
tical forms so abundant in the northern hemisphere: thus the 
most abundant and widely distributed species in Victoria is the 
Diplograpsus pristis, perfectly identical with specimens occurring 
in the slates of Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Bohemia, Sweden, 
New York and Canada; the next most common is the D. mucro- 
natus of Hall, so abundant in the Utica slates of New York, and 
which I also recognized in the slates in Ayrshire and Radnorshire; 
the D. rectangularis (M‘Coy) is the next most common Victorian 
species, and perfectly undistinguishable from those I originally 
described from the slates of Dumfriesshire ; the D. ramosus (Hall) 
described by the American paleontologist as from the “ Utica 
slates,” near Albany, but which I also detected in Scotland, is 
likewise represented by well-preserved specimens in the National 
