THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 13 
In concluding my address, do not suppose that I think for one 
moment that our young men are ever to be looking through lenses, 
or that our young women are to do naught but classify flowers or 
animals. Nor do I suppose or wish that all evening parties should 
be turned into scientific conversaziones, that lectures should take the 
place of songs, and dances all give way to disections. I only 
plead for an intelligent acquaintance with the phenomena of nature, 
and some knowledge of the laws by which such phenomena are 
governed ; that the conversation of intelligent people should some- 
times rise above the idiotic meanderings of dreary commonplaces, 
and that blatant ignorance should not assume to be the philosophy 
of the day. Ladies and gentlemen of our Club, you are doing your 
part in no unimportant work. You are helping to bring in a time 
of knowledge that shall alike be useful and reverant. Our land is 
full of wealth. Rich mines of truth need patient investigation to 
compel them to yield up their stores—hidden treasures are for 
these who can learn the password. Let us learn to know that we 
may know to act. 
Ovutiine oF Lecturerte sy Rey. A. W. CRESSWELL, ON SOME 
oF THE Larager Extinct AnimALs oF AUSTALASIA. 
After a few introductory remarks, the lecturer drew attention to 
the well-known laws connected with the geographical distribution of 
animals, according to which every large continental division of the 
earth has a certain class of existing animals which are more or less 
peculiar to or characteristic of it, and also the fossil remains of the 
animals found in the most recent Tertiary deposits of every such 
Zoological Province” indicate a pre-existent group of animals of 
the same types as are now living there, only for the most part on a 
very gigantic scale. After giving some illustrations of these laws by 
comparing the Recent with the Pleistocene fauna in the Natural 
History provinces of Europe, Southern Asia, and South America, 
the lecturer then proceeded to show that the two provinces of 
Australia and New Zealand offered no exception. Australia and 
the adjacent islands formed the great abode of the marsupials, and 
so also the extinct quadrupeds whose fossil remains were found in 
the most recent Tertiary formations of Australia were of the same 
marsupial type, only they were of the most gigantic size, e.g., the 
Macropus (Zitan and Atlas), and Procoptodon (Goliah), were the 
giant prototypes of the kangaroos, only three times as large as the 
largest “old man.” Diprotodons (Australis and longiceps) were the 
ancient representatives of our little native bear, but were as large as 
a rhinoceros, and being, of course, unable to climb up trees, used to 
pull them down, like the Megatherium, or giant sloth of South 
America, and the Thylacoleos (Oweni and carnifex), or great 
