E = . not available at the time Dr. Walkom w 
44 ; Transactions. 
several features of community between the Western Australian fauna and 
that of New Zealand. 
It is interesting to note that Neumayr (1883) was of the opinion that 
Australasia and China were connected during Jurassic times into a single 
continental mass; but the discovery of the Malayan developments of the 
marine fauna has caused certain authors—e.g., Lemoine (1906) and Haug 
(1911)—to substitute the conception of an Australo-Indo-Madagascan con- 
tinent, over which there transgressed epicontinental seas into Western 
Australia and the Runn of Kutch during the Bajocian- Callovian epoch. 
Uhlig (1911) recognized in this a western development of the Mediterranean- 
Caucasian faunal province which merged into the Himalayan, of whic 
regarded as extensions the West African, West Australian, and New Zealand 
developments. These exhibit marked affinity with the faunas of the Japanese 
and South Andean provinces, though the contrast they show with the 
boreal and North Andean province prevents us recognizing a circumpacific 
geosyncline. The conclusions of Trechmann and Spath (1921) accord with 
this, and thus are not opposed to the hypothesis of a Jurassic land 
connection between South America and Australasia suggested by palaeo- 
botanical evidence, and, according to Hedley (1911), by modern biogeography. 
A further conception of Neumayr’s must also be considered. Hedle 
(1909) has restated it from a biogeographic standpoint as follows: “А 
meridional. crease in the earth’s crust produced in Jurassic times a gulf, 
which he called the Gulf of Queensland, whose western shore transgressed 
the present east Australian coast. Enlarging through geological cycles, this 
gulf grew into what we know now as the Tasman and Coral Seas. . . . As 
fauna e wever, continued subsidence to the east at last burst 
through the Melanesian plateau, a flood of active competitors must have 
swept in from the open Pacific. . . . With the opening of Torres 
t 
Straits, and the consequent outgoing current, the Queensland fauna was 
spread along north Australia to the Moluccas." 
Walkom (1918), in discussing the above, points out that the late Triassic 
me. . . . The gulf was probably more or less coincident with the 
present position of the Thomson Trough, but whether this trough is as old 
as Lower Mesozoic is difficult to determine.” His palaeogeographic map 
(1918, fig. 5) illustrated his conclusion that during Jurassic times the eastern 
coast of Australasia remained in much the same position as it was in during 
the Triassic period,* and to the south the Gulf of Queensland disappeared, 
or was very much reduced. 
* Piroutet’s conclusion concerning the Jurassic emergence of New Caledonia was 
rote. 7 
ресс 
