2 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
at present living in the country, although some, such as Araucaria, 
have become extinct in New Zealand. In the lower beds of the 
system these plants are associated with ferns that are also found 
in the jurassic strata. The flora of the tertiary era “is badly 
preserved, and the collections are scanty; but, as far as yet 
studied, it bears a very close affinity to the recent flora of the 
country.” It thus appears that the main features of the present 
New Zealand flora are very old, dating from the cretaceous 
period, with a mixture of still older forms among the ferns and 
conifers. 
Let us now turn to Australia. No fossil plants, so far as I 
know, have as yet been found in Western Australia, but in East- 
ern Australia they occur in several places. The paleeozoic rocks 
of Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland contain Calamites, 
Lepidodendron, and Ferns, in some cases identical with plants 
of the same era in Europe and America. In the triassic and 
jurassic beds Cycads and Conifers are found, together with the 
same ferns which occur in New Zealand and in India in equi- 
valent systems. No plants are known of cretaceous age, but in 
the eocene, vegetable remains have been found in New South 
Wales which, according to Baron von Miller and Baron von 
Ettingshausen, are all extinct forms but little allied to the 
present Australian flora; for with Pittosporum, Knightia, and 
four kinds of Eucalyptus, there occur Birches, Alders, Oaks and 
Beeches ; while in Victoria extinct tropical trees are found which 
resemble those of Asia. The fossil plants mentioned by Mr. 
Darwin, at Geilston Bay, near Hobart, in a fresh-water limestone 
of probably miocene age, are also very different from those now 
living in Tasmania. ‘They belong, as Mr. Darwin says, to a lost 
vegetation.* They represent Willows, Birches, Alders, Oaks and 
Beeches, along with Coprosma, Araucaria, and others. They 
are more characteristic of Australia than are the eocene plants, 
but still both are much nearer to the tertiary floras of Europe, 
Asia, and North America,*than to the,recent Australian fora. 
In beds of newer pliocene age plant remains have been found 
both in New South Wales and in Victoria, and these, according 
to Baron von Miiller, are allied to the present flora of Eastern 
Australia. What a contrast to New Zealand is here. The 
present flora of Eastern Australia does not date beyond the 
pliocene period, previous to which the country was covered by a 
lost vegetation allied to the tertiary floras of Europe and Asia ; 
while in New Zealand, as we have just seen, the present flora 
dates from the cretaceous period. 
Mr. Wallace has given a very simple explanation of these 
curious facts. The Australian flora, he says, consists of 
two large divisions: (1) The characteristic Australian flora, 
which is chiefly temperate, and hardly represented in New Zea- , 
land ; and (2) A tropical flora, which is less in number than the 
first, is closely allied to the floras of India and Malaya, and has 
* Volcanic Islands, p. 140, 
