I —INTRODUCTION * 
Mr. C. S. Wilkinson, Government Geologist of New Soutli Wales, had 
the kindness to entrust his collection of Australian Tertiary Plants to me, 
for which I now express my most sincere thanks. The present work follows 
the Memoir, “ Contributions to the Tertiary Flora of Australia, Part I,” 
published in the 47th vol. of the “ Denkschriften” of the Imperial Academy 
of Sciences of Vienna. 
It is highly satisfactory to me that the general results I obtained from 
my first efforts are not alone strengthened, but materially completed by this 
Second Part, which I now lay before the Academy. The results of both 
parts are based on exact determinations of fossils. But, considering it in 
some degree the duty of a careful examiner of a fossil flora, I have taken 
into consideration not only the plainly determinable objects, but also many 
more or less uncertain cases. Although I have never founded the before- 
mentioned results upon the latter cases, I have only employed an experience 
of almost forty years to interpreting the fossils as far as possible, for which 
the richest herbariums have been at my disposal. I trust I may not err in 
supposing that scientific persons will agree with my method, the more so, as 
it gives a complete review of the results obtained from a fossil flora. 
Before recording the general results of my second contribution, I have 
to remark — to prevent misunderstanding — that I should be greatly obliged 
to any author in Phyto-palaeontological science, who, having gained either 
experience, and supplied with better scientific means, would rectify my 
statements. I have, nevertheless, some grounds for declaring that time is too 
precious to permit of my entering into polemical disputes. 
The one hundred and twenty-eight species of fossil plants, described in 
the following special part, mostly come from Vegetable Creek, near Emma- 
ville, in New England, New South Wales; twenty-one species have been 
collected from Elsinore, and only five species from Tin glia, in New England. 
Mr. C. S. Wilkinson, who has examined these localities, referred them to the 
Lower Tertiary formation. The species are distributed into thirty-six families 
and seventy-two genera. Of the former thirty-five, and of the latter fifty- 
* [The substance of this Introduction appeared in the Geological Magazine, 1S87, IV, p. 359, by Baron von 
Ettingshauseu. — R. E. , jnr. ] 
