644 president's address. 
Professor Tate in his address to Section D. of the Aust. Assoc. for 
the Advancement of Science in Sydney, 1887, divides the flora of 
Australia, as follows : — 
I. Immigrant. 
a. Oriental. 
b. Andean. 
II. Endemic. 
1. Euronotian or eastern. 
2. Autochthonous or western. 
3. Eremian or central. 
He says that between the Euronotian and Autochthonian a 
barrier always existed ; in Cretaceous times it was to a large extent 
lacustrine, later on the lakes dried up and the present desert barrier 
formed. 
His conclusions are : (1) that the Australian flora is of high 
antiquity ; (2) that the Autochthonian constituent was dis- 
membered in Cretaceous times and, (3) that the Euronotian con- 
stituent was modified during very early Tertiary times by a 
primitive cosmopolitan flora. 
I do not see much to dispute in the above except the supposed 
existence of a cosmopolitan flora, which is a mere assumption. 
Now let us see what is to be learnt from the study of fossil 
plants as to the former land surfaces of the southern hemisphere. 
In the Australian Coal Measures, which are now acknowledged 
to be of Permo-Carboniferous age, there is a remarkable absence 
of the plants which abound in contemporaneous beds of the 
northern hemisphere, but instead of this we meet with an 
enormous development of Glossopteris, Gangamopleris, and other 
genera of ferns which do not occur in the northern hemisphere 
till a much later epoch. These forms are found over a very large 
area of the earth's surface, not only in Australia, but also in 
India and South Africa, and it has been recently announced that 
a remarkable aftinity with the Australian and Indian Carboni- 
ferous fern flora has been traced in Argentina in South America. 
