1869.] EATTEAY — cape-toeb: peninsitla. 297 



prove ; and I trust that Mr. Green, to wliose valuable suggestions 

 and help I am much indebted, will shortly be able more fully to cor- 

 roborate and extend my present views on this subject. 



Mat 26, 1869. 



E. Story, Esq., M.A., F.L.S., 3 King Edward Terrace, Liverpool 

 Eoad, Islington, 'N.; F. W. Harmer, Esq., of Heigham Grove, 

 Norwich, and Henry J. Eotherby, M.D. Lond., M.E.C.S., Vice- 

 President of the Hunterian Society, 40 Trinity Square, Tower Hill, 

 E., were elected Fellows of the Society. 



The following communications were read : — 



1. I^otes on the Geology of the Cape-Tokk Peisttn'stjla, Australia. 

 By Alexander RattPvAt, M.D. (Edin.), Surgeon, R.IN'. 



(Communicated by the President.) 



Perhaps no country in the world, Papua and the South Polar con- 

 tinent excepted, possesses a greater extent of unexplored territory 

 than Australia. So much of its interior and of its northern or tro- 

 pical portion (about one-fifth, or 60,000 square miles, according to 

 Neumayer) is still a terra incognita, and so much of its natural 

 history remains enveloped in mystery, that the following remarks 

 with regard to one of its last-settled but still least-known parts may 

 not be altogether devoid of interest. 



Altogether apart from the attention long fixed on limited portions 

 of this vast land, on account of its extensive and valuable mineral 

 resources and the gold, copper, and coal found in its eastern and 

 southern colonies, much curiosity of a more strictly scientific nature 

 centres in it as a whole. And geologists are desirous of knowing 

 the special and distinctive characteristics both of the settled districts 

 and of the unoccupied and little or altogether unknown parts, in 

 order to determine their relation to those of the adjacent islands 

 of Tasmania, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and the Indian Archi- 

 pelago (especially Papua, so close at hand), all known to possess a 

 totally distinct fauna and flora, and of ascertaining whether these 

 resemble or differ from those of other and perhaps better-known 

 portions of the globe, especially their Antipodes in Europe, and par- 

 ticularly Great Britain, necessarily the chief standard of compa- 

 rison to which English observers turn. Every item necessarily fur- 

 thers this object; and hence these notes, which form an expansion 

 of a paper read before the Philosophical (now Royal) Society of 

 New South Wales in September 1865. 



Australia has been caJled a land of anomalies ; and its physical 

 aspect fully corroborates the assertion. For, unlike other surfaces, 

 whether insular or continental, instead of having a more or less 

 median mountain-axis flanked by less lofty land, the ridge is here 

 circumferential and closely borders the coast, so as to enclose an ex- 

 tensive, comparatively level, basin-like interior. Thus the low, and 



