648 
PRESIDENT S ADDRESS. 
the existence through long periods of geological time of large areas 
of land surface, and the discovery of dicotyledonous plant remains 
in the Ipswich Coal Measures containing types similar to those 
existing in Australia at the present day and the absence of any 
such fossils of corresponding age in the northern hemisphere point 
to the same conclusion. It seems highly probable that we have 
in store for us a series of most interesting discoveries whereby we 
may have revealed the primitive types of the Angiosperms and be 
able to trace at any rate their ancestry some considerable way 
back. 
In the Journal of Botany, 1865, there is a translation by Seemann 
of a remarkable and sensational address delivered in 1861 by 
Professor Unger of the University of Vienna to his students, 
entitled "New Holland in Europe." In this address Unger gives 
an account of the supposed identity of a portion of the European 
Eocene flora with the existing flora of Australia. This was the 
first clear exposition of a theory which has found favour witk 
certain European Botanists, although strongly contested by others. 
Wesel and Weber had some years before this written a paper 
on the vegetable remains from the brown coal of the Rhine, and 
an abstract will be found in the Quarterly Journal of the Geo- 
logical Society, Vol. XV. Hooker in a note on this subject in the 
Introduction to the "Flora of Tasmania" says: — "The Australian 
genera include Eucalyptus, Casuarina, Templetonia, Banksia, 
Dryandra and Hakea. I am not prepared to assert that these 
identifications or the Australian ones of the Mollasse are all so 
unsatisfactory that the evidence of Australian types in the brown 
coal and Mollasse should be altogether set aside; but I do consider 
that not one of the above-named genera is identified at all satis- 
factorily, and that many of them are not even problematically 
decided." 
Unger begins his address by contrasting life at the present day 
in Australia with that of Europe, pointing out that in the one you 
have the lowest types of mammals and the lowest types of man 
as compared with the highest orders of mammals and the highest 
civilized man in the other, and then enters into a diatribe against 
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