Baring Post-Miocene Times. 21 



natural hot-houses it is sought in vain until we reach the 

 tropics, now its natural home (Wallace's Australia, p. 130). 

 How could this heat-loving palm-tree have marched over the 

 Dividing Ranges into Gippsland, unless a rise in the tem- 

 perature at some earlier period had favoured the passage? 



Again, we must call in glacial influences to account for the 

 disappearance of the huge beasts which tenanted Australia 

 in bygone times. 



Wallace tells us that "we live in a zoologically impover- 

 ished world, from which all the largest, fiercest, and strongest 

 forms have recently disappeared" (Geo. Dist. P. and A., p. 

 150), and he connects this remarkable fact with the refrige- 

 ration of climate during the glacial period. 



Professor Phillips also connects the extinction of the 

 great carnivora and pachydermata with the same cause, 

 while Professor A. Geikie takes a similar view (Text Booh, 

 p. 894). It must at once occur to every mind that our great 

 marsupials died out early in the quaternary epoch, if not 

 before then. If it was this cold which destroyed the monsters 

 of the other hemisphere, it was probably the same cause 

 which destroyed those of this half also. Their extinction 

 at this particular point of time indicates to us a severe fall 

 in the temperature of Australia. 



The next question we shall have to consider is that of 

 secular oceanic oscillation. As we have already mentioned, 

 Croll and others believe that the loaded pole of a glacial 

 period shifts the centre of gravity and pulls around it the 

 waters of the ocean. Taking his. figures as a basis, an Ant- 

 arctic ice-cap extending only 55° S. latitude, and having 

 a slope of only half a degree, would cause the sea level to 

 rise 1100 feet at the South Pole, and about 900 feet in the 

 latitude of Melbourne (Croll, G and T., p. 389). 



Now, any such a rise within the period we are discussing 

 would leave behind it traces which we could recognise ; and 

 as a glacial epoch and land submergence are connected 

 together in nature, the evidence which establishes the occur- 

 rence of the one may be brought in to support that of the 

 other. 



A rise of 900 feet on the part of the ocean would convert 

 Australia into a long, narrow, mountainous island, with an 

 archipelago to the west of it, the former representing 

 Eastern and the latter Western Australia. 



Now, we have in Victoria marine deposits of post-miocene 

 age up to and over the altitude of 1000 feet. 



