vii 



Acrodi, Psammodi, Sec. Araucaria? and Cycadeous plants flourish on the Australian 

 continent, where Marsupial quadrupeds abound, and thus appear to complete a picture 

 of an ancient condition of the earth's surface which has been superseded in our hemi- 

 sphere by other strata and higher types of vegetable and animal organizations"*. The 

 most common butterflies in Australia are species of the genus Cynthia ; recognizable 

 remains of a butterfly of that genus have been detected in the Jura limestone of 

 Europe. The fossil Polypodium of the mesozoic slates of Saxony has its nearest living 

 representative in a species common upon the Dandenong ranges of Australia. But the 

 most remarkable and unexpected additional illustration of the general view enunciated 

 in 1846 has been the discovery of a representative and near ally of a palaeozoic fossil 

 fish of Europe in the Ceratodus Forsteri, Krefft, from rivers in Queensland f. 



Well-sinkers have made known the great vertical extent of the Australian pleistocene 

 freshwater flood-drifts, in which the fossil remains of the Marsupial analogues of the 

 British mesozoic mammals have mostly been discovered. 



Tracts of land now covered by such drifts may never have been subjected to the alter- 

 nate submersions and emersions to which the changing successive scenes of life are due 

 since creatures akin to Thylacines, Thylacoleons, and Myrmecobians pursued their 

 predatory work in mesozoic Europe. 



It remains, however, for the able geologists of Australia to demonstrate the con- 

 ditions under which the actual and pleistocene surfaces of their continent, prior to the 

 introduction of European plants and animals, seem exclusively to have exhibited an 

 oolitic phase or scene of life. 



Ltell, in 1833, thus summarizes the discoveries of mammalian fossils made there at 

 that date : — 



" In several parts of Australia ossiferous breccias have lately been discovered in 

 limestone caverns ; and the remains of the fossil mammalia are found to be referable to 

 species now living in that country, mingled with some relics of extinct animals. Many 

 of these have been examined by Major Mitchell in the Wellington valley, about 210 

 miles west from Sydney, on the river Bell, one of the principal sources of the Mac- 

 quarie, and on the Macquarie itself. 



" The remains found most abundantly are those of the Kangaroo. Amongst others, 

 those of the Wombat, Dasyurus, Koala, Phalangista have been recognized. The 

 greater part of them belong to existing, but several to extinct, species. One of the 

 bones is of much greater size than the rest, and is supposed by Mr. Clift to belong to 

 a Hippopotamus J. 



"In the collection of these bones sent to Paris, Mr. Pentland thought he could 

 * British Fossil Mammals, p. G9, 8vo, 1846. 



t See the excellent Memoir by Dr. A. Gunther, F.K.S., in the Philosophical Transactions of the Koyal 

 Society, 1871, p. 511. 



t " Mr. Clift, Ed. New Phil. Journ. No. xx. p. 394 ; Major Mitchell, Proceedings of Geol. Soc. 1831 . 

 p. 321." 



