1806 
PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 
old continents had already been separated into three independent 
parts ; and that Africa, India and Australia were already divided 
by arms of the sea ; in the Triassic period, on the contrary, 
Africa was probably still connected with India, but Australia 
had already then become independent. 
§5. “Thus, instead of increasing, the old continents shrank 
more and more ; and probably at the same rate at which 
Europe and Asia emerged from the sea, the latter overflowed 
immense areas that were formerly terra Jirma. 
§ 6. “ At the present day only small fragments remain of the 
once existing southern continent, but these by the thickness of 
the horizontally bedded freshwater formations and the mightiness 
of the physical conditions which they reveal, allow us to draw 
conclusions as to the vast extent of the land to which they once 
belonged. 
§ 7. “ The I’ock systems above treated of were none of them 
deposited till after the cessation of the folding action. We find 
all the beds nearly horizontal, either forming plateau regions, or 
occupying shallow basins, and important stratigraphical distur- 
bances are either local, or only to be enumerated as exceptional 
cases of rare occurrence. The period of the fallings in had com- 
menced before the formation of the above descidbed rock systems 
had been finally completed. Vast areas which had formerly been 
terra Jirma were more and more submerged, and the witnesses of 
these events are the scanty marine deposits which we still meet 
with along the margins of the few remaining fragments of the 
ancient continent in Africa, India and Australia. 
§ 8. “ It was on this continent that in times long gone by events 
transpired which remind one strongly of the events which hap- 
pened during the Quarternary Glacial period in the northern 
hemisphere ; and there was probably a time when this southern 
continent was covered with vast masses of ice.” 
The determination of this Glacial period is, according to our 
author, rendered difficult by the fact that in the Uitenhage, 
Cutch, and Australian (Muree) beds where marine and fresh 
