28 THE VICTORIAN NATDRALIST. 



the gigantic progenitus of existing marsupalia have been found in 

 Tasmania, while no mesozoic, i.e., secondary formations supply 

 evidence of the former existence of Icthyosauri, Plesiosauri, and 

 Enaliosauri, those leviathan marine lizards which swarmed seas of 

 the Oolitic period in Northern Australia, as well as those of 

 Europe. And add to this no fossil remains of Cams dingo — the 

 wild-dog — have rewarded the search of paheontologists in that 

 island; notwithstanding that such fossil remains are quite common 

 on this mainland. (In saying this, I am quite aware that the late 

 Gerrard Krefft, F.L.S., C.M.Z.S., in his JSTotes on the Fauna of 

 Tasmania, speaks of the dingo as being "extinct;" but I have yet 

 to learn that any fossil bones of that animal have ever been 

 discovered in the island) — in the post pliocene deposits; as for 

 instance at Mt. Macedon, and beneath the volcanic ashes at 

 Warrnarabool, in Victoria. And lastly, no marsupial lion, the 

 Thylacoleo, appears to have roamed through the forests of Tasmania 

 as it did on this continent; and no gigantic Dromornis — the 

 progenitor of the emu, stalksd over the grass-clothed plains when 

 Victorian volcanoes poured forth their fiery floods of lava to form 

 the extensive plains which you now see. 



Although Tasmania is only separated by a span, comparatively 

 speaking, from the Australian mainland, and at best can only be 

 regarded as an outlier, there is, as will readily be seen, a very wide 

 gap in the geologic record between the two areas, and also in the 

 history of their respective fauna; and which gap is traceable to the 

 fact of there being no known mesozoic equivalents of the cretaceous 

 and oolitic groups such as obtain in Queensland, nor of the beds 

 of Barrabool Hills, in this colony, nor the representatives of the 

 Jurassic limestone system. 



From the upper coal measures of Tasmania to the eocene epoch, 

 there is a gulf unbridged as far as the investigations of the geologist 

 have extended. It has yet to be satisfactorily proved that the 

 apper coal measures of Tasmania are of oolitic age, as some staunch 

 advocates of their oolitic origin contend ; notwithstanding the striking 

 agreements of much of the fossil flora with well-known European 

 oolitic f acies, and which agreement has been considerably strengthened 

 by the fact of the fossil bones of a huge batrachian reptile, allied to 

 the well-known Lahyrinthodon of secondary deposits of Europe, 

 having been discovered some years ago in a quarry of coal-measui'e 

 sandstone at Hobart, from which quarry the stone was obtained 

 for building Government House. But, even conceding that Tasnianian 

 coal-measures are of true oolitic origin, there are absent other 

 mesozoic systems and groups, such as the triassic and cretaceous, as 

 already stated. It may, therefore, be said that at a single step we 

 pass over incalculable periods of geologic time, viz., from the 

 mesozoic to the cainozoic epochs, which are wholly unrepresented 



