AUSTRALIA AND EUROPE FORMERLY ONE CONTINENT. 25 
nental connection of them with Asia by way of the Moluccas. 
It is, therefore, by means of a continental highway that the 
Ara ucarias, Proteacece, Santalece, and numerous other arboreous 
and herbaceous plants, reached our continent, where, after 
myriads of years, they are still preserved as fossils. But 
supposing that the highway had been sufficiently practicable 
to permit masses of plants to reach Europe, the problem still 
remains, how did it come to pass that they could make so 
difficult a journey, extending over thousands of years, without 
obtaining on foreign Asiatic soil conditions favourable to their 
existence? Unfortunately, the geological investigations of 
that continent do, as yet, not enable us to make even a sur- 
mise, but we know for certain the ranks of these Australian 
emigrants were increased in Asia by a number of species 
which continued with them their onward march to Europe, — ■ 
at that time, it should be remembered, not a cold country. 
But Europe of the Eocene period received the plants which 
spread over mountains and plains, valleys and river-banks, 
neither exclusively from the south nor from the east. The 
west also furnished additions, and if at that period these 
were rather meagre, they show, at all events, that the 
bridge was already building which, at a later period, was to 
facilitate communication between the two continents in such a 
remarkable manner. At that time some plants of the western 
continent began to reach Europe by means of the island of 
Atlantis, then probably just rising above the ocean. The nu- 
merous Hickories, Maples, Oaks, Poplars, JSTyssacece and Pcipi- 
lionacece, &c., can have reached us only from a western centre 
of creation. Europe thus became, in all probability, the farthest 
limit attained by the outposts and colonists of three great 
centres of creation, situated at about equal distances from each 
other, and the place where they met and amalgamated. 
Europe, without being a centre of creation, thus received the 
impress of the peculiarities of three great continents. 
Australia, on account of its isolated geographical position, 
strange productions, curious physical character, and the low 
degree of development attained by its flora and fauna, must 
not be regarded as a newly-born island, but, on the contrary, 
as a country in its senility, which from time immemorial had 
retained its character unchanged. New Holland may be likened 
to an old man, rather than to a child ; it does not begin to 
breathe and to live ; on the contrary, it has lived and toiled, and 
is tottering towards the grave. This is indicated, not only by 
its flora and fauna, but also by geological peculiarities of the 
country. None of the newer formations, so widely diffused over 
Europe, cover its extensive primitive rocks ; and its older de- 
posits, principally consisting of layers of carboniferous sandstone 
