I.— INTRODUCTION.* 
Mr. C. S. Wilkinson - , the Government Geologist of New South Wales, 
forwarded to the British Museum in London, for examination and determin- 
ation, a collection of Tertiary Fossil Plants, collected hy Mr. J. Iv. Hume, of 
Yass. Entrusted with the working out of this collection whilst at the 
British Museum, I had the opportunity, through the kindness of Hr. Henry 
Woodward and Mr. Bobert Etheridge, Junior, of examining all the fossil 
plants of the Tertiary formations of Australia in the custody of that institution, 
and, through the courtesy of Mr. William Carruthers, the necessary material 
for a comparison between these fossils and living plants from the rich 
Herbarium of the same Museum. Sir Joseph Hooker, also, placed at my 
disposal for purposes of comparison, the magnificent Collections of the 
Botanical Museum and Conservatories of Kew Gardens. 
Provided with such ample means, I was enabled to undertake a task 
which elsewhere, on account of the great difficulty of determining the fossil 
plants of a continent whose flora is so peculiar, would have been almost 
impossible. Hence my first duty is to render my most cordial thanks to the 
gentlemen named, for liberal assistance rendered by them to me. 
The deeper insight which the Tertiary Elora of Europe has already been 
the means of affording, renders any information as to the, as yet almost 
unknown Tertiary Floras of the other parts of the world highly desirable, and 
every contribution to a knowledge of these floras should therefore he welcome. 
The Tertiary Flora of Australia, however, is of quite exceptional interest, for 
the following reasons : — 
(1.) In the first place the question presents itself : What are the 
relations between the Tertiary Flora of this continent and the 
peculiarities of its present flora ? 
# [An abstract of this Introduction appeared in the Geological Magazine, 1883, x, p. 153, written by Baron 
von Ettingshausen. — R.E., jnr.] 
11a 67—88 
C 
