PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. 27 



Sandstone, and in the Northern Territory we have shown 

 on the maps of H. Y. L. Brown and Tate, areas of Desert 

 Sandstone which in reality are now known to be of Lower 

 Palaeozoic sandstones and quartzites, we can realise how 

 there has been confusion between physiographic character 

 and geological terminology. These will serve as a few 

 general remarks on the question as affecting Eastern 

 Australia, but this is local only. The point of the greatest 

 scientific significance is the relation between the faunas 

 of the Western Cretaceous Mediterranean region and those 

 of the Eurasian province. 



It was pointed out in the Federal Handbook of the British 

 Association for the Advancement of Science in 1914, that 

 the Eastern and Western Mesozoic marine faunas as a 

 whole have no species in common, excepting of genera of 

 extremely inconstant form. 



It has been pointed out by David, Woolnough, and other 

 writers, that the difference between the marine faunas of 

 the Permo-Oarboniferous system in Eastern and Western 

 Australia necessitates the presence of a more or less com- 

 plete land barrier during late Palaeozoic time, preventing 

 the mingling of the respective faunas and resulting in the 

 isolation in the East of an endemic, and what may be 

 termed a specific Permo-Carboniferous life assemblage, a& 

 compared with a contemporaneous Western fauna, which 

 is a direct result of a southern migration of the typical 

 Eurasian Permo-Oarboniferous assemblage, which evid- 

 ences, to a great extent, a mingling of Carboniferous and 

 Permian types. This question has already been discussed 

 in the Federal Handbook previously mentioned, and the 

 Asiatic Russian and American aspects have been sum- 

 marised by Schuchert in the American Journal of Science 

 for 1906. 



