Benson.—-Palaeozoic and Mesozoic Seas in Australasia. 5 
connected with Asia by temporary land-bridges during Lower Triassic times 
(“ when Hatteria entered New Zealand "'). 
Professor David (1893) further summarized the pre-Mesozoic geological 
history of Australasia. He inferred the proximity of land in various 
regions and periods, but did not offer palaeogeographic charts. Thus he 
stated that the land which must have supplied the detritus of which the 
New Zealand Silurian rocks were formed must have existed near the 
present west coast, but has since been removed denudation. Portion 
of it may possibly be represented by the crystalline schists of Otago, but 
it may be doubted whether there was any land at all within the present 
area of New Zealand before the commencement of the Mesozoic period, 
when, for the first time, coarse conglomerates and a land-flora made their 
appearance. 
During the next decade evidence was accumulating which indicated 
the former extension of Australia to the east and south of its present limits. 
The former eastward extension, originally deduced by Clarke (1878) from 
the abundance of the epicontinental Mesozoic deposits and absence of 
Tertiary marine rocks near the present eastern shore-line, was confirmed 
by the discovery that there frequently occurs current-bedding in the 
Newcastle coal-measures, which indicates their deposition by currents 
flowing towards the west (see David, 19074). The southward extension, 
which had been first suggested by Tate's (1879) announcement that the 
glacial beds near Adelaide contained erratics which appeared to have come 
from the south, was confirmed when in 1895 it was shown that the most 
abundant of the recognizable types were derived from near the mouth of 
the Murray River, fifty miles to the south of their present position. At 
the same time the glaciation was proved to be pre-Miocene, and was referred 
to the Cretaceous by Brown, and to the Permo-Carboniferous by Howchin 
obtained that the supposedly contemporaneous ice-sheet in Victoria and 
Tasmania moved to the north-north-east, and that a large elevated land 
area must have existed to the south-west of the present limits of the 
three States mentioned. 
Hutton (1900, pp. 180-81) again summarized the geological history of 
New Zealand, in effect saying that of the early Palaeozoic era in this 
region we know but little; but towards the close of the Devonian period 
land certainly existed, though its outlines are uncertain. It subsided 
beneath the sea during Carboniferous times, but subsequently was raised 
so that in Permian times, after folding had taken place, New Zealand lay 
near the shore of a continent stretching away towards Tasmania and 
Australia, to which perhaps it was joined. He concurred with Stephens 
(1889) in recognizing the fossils of the Maitai series as of Australian 
Permo-Carboniferous types. Middle Jurassic orogeny was believed by 
him to have been accompanied by the subsidence of the crust with the 
formation of the Tasman Sea, though leaving a broad strip oí land west 
of the Southern Alps, which extended northwards to New Caledonia and 
New Guinea. This connection he believed was broken in the Upper 
Cretaceous movement of crust-subsidence, and was not renewed in the 
early Tertiary emergence, with the discussion of which this paper is not 
concerned. 
Lemoine (1906), discussing the former limits of Gondwanaland, con- 
sidered that it extended across Australia and the Tasman Sea, and that 
along its northern and eastern shores there migrated the Tethyan forms 
