167 



parallelism in the succession of the productions of the land 

 than with those of the sea." 



When Darwin, therefore, refers to simultaneous change of 

 organisms in different ages throughout the world, he expressly 

 states that the meaning must he taken in the broadest 

 sense. Indeed, he affirms, " it must not be supposed that it 

 has a very strict geological sense, for if all the marine 

 animals now living in Europe, and all those that lived in 

 Europe during the Pleistocene period, were compared with 

 those now existing in South America, or in Australia, the 

 most skilled naturalist would hardly be able to say whether 

 the present or the Pleistocene inhabitants resembled most 

 closely those of the southern hemisphere." A more striking 

 illustration might be added as regards terrestrial forms of 

 life, for if we regard the existing characteristic plants — 

 Banksia, Qrevillea, Lomatia, ISucalyptus, Laurus, Cinnamomum 

 — of Australia the skilled naturalist would find equal 

 difficulty in concluding whether the Miocene or existing 

 terrestrial forms of Europe resembled most closely those 

 characteristic terrestrial forms now existing in Australia. 

 And a still more striking illustration may also be given from 

 Tasmanian rocks of Miocene age, where a vegetation, con- 

 sisting of oaks, elms, beeches, alders, laurels, etc., prevails, 

 showing a closer resemblance to the existing vegetation of 

 Europe than is exhibited by the existing vegetation of 

 Tasmania. 



Henry Alleyno Nicholson, in his " Manual of Palaeont- 

 ology," also gives a striking illustration of the danger of 

 drawing hard and fast lines of demarcation between sub- 

 divisions of systems in widely separated regions on the basis 

 of European classification. He states (p. 48) : — " Moreover, 

 when wo come to examine the boundary-line between the 

 Cretaceous and Tertiary in a region far removed from Europe 

 — namely, in North America — we find that between the two 

 formations, so widely separated in the Old World, we have 

 some four thousand feet of strata (the so-called ' Lignitic 

 series ') containing such a complete intermixture of the 

 forms of life characteristic of these two periods, that it has 

 been a matter of lively controversy whether they should be 

 regarded as the summit of the older or the base of the newer 

 series of sediments." In New South Wales we have also a 

 similar illustration in the existence of an assemblage of 

 plants, combining in the same formation (Newcastle Beds) 

 the typical forms Glossopteris, Gangamopteris, of the lower 

 carboniferous coal measures, with the typical forms Phyllo- 

 theca, Sphenopteris, and Zeugophyllites of the more recent 

 Mesozoic formations, and hence we must concur with Prof. 

 Nicholson in the statement (pp. 45, 46), " and therefore we 



