4 Transactions,— Miscellaneous. 
It is therefore to be regretted that it has come to be so commonly 
applied to this one particular era of assumed change in the temperature of 
the whole globe, that several writers use the terms Pre-glacial and Pliocene 
as synonymous, even when the consideration of their readers is being 
directed by them to New Zealand. 
This supposed frigid epoch in the earth’s history may well, however, 
be taken as a fresh starting point by those naturalists who agree with 
Professor Haéckel, in his proposition that during the “ Glacial Epoch 
between these vast lifeless ice continents there remained only a narrow zone 
to which the life of the organic world had to withdraw."* 
Where this oasis was exactly situated, “the seed of our coming, the seed 
of food, the seed of man," as the Polynesians describe their Hawaiiki, is not 
suggested, but it may not unfairly be presumed to have been in that 
portion of the globe where survivors of its most ancient denizens remain, 
the certainly unglaciated regions of Australasia. The southern ranges of 
Australia proper may come to have their local glacial period by-and-bye. 
Already heavy snows and avalanches do their work there, and fragments of 
rock have been carried down now and again from their summits, and 
deposited as blocs perchés on the sides of the sub-alpine valleys; but no 
traces of ancient ice action are to be seen. During comparatively recent 
times on the contrary, there are many evidences that a more equably warm 
climate prevailed ; in the extra tropical portion of the great island continent 
the extremes became more severe, as the extensive remnants of the inland 
sea gradually dried up. We find the remains of crocodiles in the river 
alluviums, 800 miles south of the present range of these animals, in 
juxta-position with those of the great extinct marsupials ; the tropical 
marine fauna of its northern coasts had also a wider range, and lingered 
long in the gulfs of the South Australian sea ; the set of the currents was 
probably from north to south, and species unknown on the eastern coast 
flourished in these mediterranean waters. 
It is an old conservative country this Australia—not given to abrupt 
changes—but now, like other lands in the southern hemisphere, is 
gradually rising, especially its central regions. In the Great Australian 
Bight the upheaval is estimated at as much as twelve feet in places since 
1825. Earthquakes are frequent, as in other lands undergoing a similar 
process, but their effects are little felt on the eastern coast, although 
evidences of elevation in modern times are found from Cape Howe all along 
the shores far to the north. The shocks usually are not smart enough to 
produce visible consequences ; not even to shake the trees on the slopes of 
* Hist, of Creation, Vol. I., p. 315. 
