Anotrnt Australia. 
19 
glance into those far-off days shows ii s that ovon in 
that distant past tlio sun shone for tho growing 
plants, the winds blew, and rain foil, and animals 
peopled tho earth. Long afterwards rumblings 
could bo heard, tho result of groat earth movements, 
and the rooks at more than one point burst upwards, 
lott ing loose Hoods of lava that cooled and hardened 
Kiu 1. Bondi, noar Sydney (after Solioll). 
A wavo-boftton floa-cliff, nitioli oarvod by the hua. 
into the blue-black compact rock wo cull basalt. Hut 
the volcanic fires are long since cooled, tho great 
ribbon-fern no longer lives, and no Labyrinthodont 
can bo found on earth to-day. 
Without going one stop further, wo see Australia 
has therefore a history far older than that preserved 
in written rocords. The oldest written information 
takes us back hardly more than a few hundred years. 
