Cocxsurn-Hoov.—New Zealand a Post-glacial Centre of Creation. 15 
the enormous length of time they have occupied it, not the slightest attempt. 
of divergence is manifested, and apparently as during the untold ages of 
the secondary era, they are destined to remain in statu quó, so long as the 
present circumstances obtain. It seems as unsafe to hazard any theory 
upon their inferiority and adaptability to vary as upon beauty being due 
to sexual seleetion, seeing that the most perfect beauty is possessed by 
certain organie forms which have no organs of perception at all. 
The disastrous effects of the ravages of insects in the vegetable world 
are familiar, and the power of the canker-worm and the palmer-worm to 
change the character and climate of extensive regions is not a modern 
discovery. Forests of mighty trees that have withstood the battle and the 
breeze of centuries, whose hardihood and tenacity of life is great enough to 
enable them to survive the scorching and charring of their trunks by the 
fires that sweep again and again through the jungles, quickly succumb 
under the repeated attacks of myriads of seemingly despicable foes. In 
consequence of the extraordinary increase of a species of moth, innumer- 
able armies of caterpillars for one or two consecutive seasons devoured the 
leaves of the red gum-trees in the grand forests of Gippsland, amongst 
the finest in New Holland, and now the weird skeletons of these, the 
loftiest trees, some of them, in the world, mar the landscape. For 
another half century or more, they will remain as memorials of what was 
once the condition of the shadeless plains, the extent of which men are 
ruthlessly increasing daily, over which the winds coming off the sea, that 
heretofore had kept this an Australian Eden, will cease to part with their 
refreshing showers, as they once did over the “ rain-bringing ”’ trees, and 
will carry their burthen on to the cool mountain slopes. 
The upheaval of the central region of Australia has been alluded to. 
The process goes on, and what is taking place in New Holland, New Zea- 
land, South America, and doubtless in Antarctic regions may be perhaps 
taken as evidence of the balance of weight becoming in favour of the 
northern polar ones; those who adopt this theory will deem it strength- 
ened if instead of an open polar sea, it is found that they are covered with 
ever growing mountains of ice. 
The violence of the voleanie action in the far south is felt in the con- 
vulsive throes that disturb distant places, and which cause ever and anon a 
more rapid flow of the great covering of ice, sending off vaster streams of 
bergs than during periods of rest. The earthquake waves which notified 
the disturbance in 1868, were certainly followed by such a fleet. 
It may be said that a considerable portion of Scandinavia is also rising; 
this may be a local consequence of the subsidence of a parallel belt of 
the adjacent ocean bottom, a meridional folding of the crust of the earth, as 
Mr, Campbell suggests. 
LI 
