S ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 



marvellous creatures brought up from great depths by those con- 

 trivances ; and the diagrams illustrating the wonderful features 

 of the bottom of the ocean. A request was made by me to Pro- 

 fessor "Wyville Thompson, for a personal explanation of the 

 phenomena discovered by him ; but in a courteous reply he informed 

 me that he was unable to gratify us by consent, as he would be 

 absent on the evening of our meeting on an excursion in Queens- 

 land in search of specimens of the Oeratodus Forslcrl. AVe were 

 thus deprived of the instruction which an address from that most 

 skilful naturalist could not fail to have afforded us. On 

 his return he showed me, on board the " Challenger," the fruits 

 of his journey ; and at the same time teeth of that extraordinary 

 amphibian which, though breathing through lungs and feeding 

 on vegetable matter, is still a fish, — which teeth were in a fossil 

 condition, implying that Oeratodus must have existed in Australia 

 long anterior to the present epoch, as we know that other species 

 did so long ago as the Triassic period, as shown by teeth of iden- 

 tical structure and generally similar form in the Trias of Aust- 

 clhT, in England, and at Maledi in India, where teeth were dis- 

 covered during the geological survey of that country under the 

 superintendence of Dr. Oldham. This singular ally of the Lepi- 

 dosiren is conclusively shown by Dr. Giinther of the British 

 Museum to have had even a higher lineage than has been men- 

 tioned, and to belong to the same classification as certain fishes 

 of the Devonian epoch, proving an antiquity of enormous age. 

 "When Mr. Forster brought down this creature for the purpose of 

 scientific examination, he perhaps little anticipated that his 

 name would go down to a distant posterity in association with a 

 creature that dates its family descent from the dark ages of pris- 

 tine existence, during the dominion of the Devonian and Car- 

 boniferous seons. 



Nor ought it be otherwise than a matter of some congratu- 

 lation that, considering how many things in Australia are first 

 notified in Europe, so interesting a discovery should have been 

 submitted to first examination in our own Colonial Museum, 

 several of whose Trustees saw and recognized its genus, and by 



