Australia
by John Foster Vesey Fitzgerald (9781459036901)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. FLORA AND FAUNA. To the eye of the botanist the flora of Australia presents the richest treat. Already 8000 distinct species have been discovered, a number exceeding those known in Europe: it is supposed that 2OOO more may still be added to them: Additional interest is given to this study when we consider the very remote geological period at which this continent was separated from the other country. This has rendered any intrusion upon it from without an impossibility. A distinct affinity has been observed between its flora and that of South Africa. This has led naturalists to think that at some remote epoch land must have existed between the two- continents, and possibly that they might at one period have been united. Sir J. Hooker, than whom there is no higher authority, in his " Flora of Australia, its origin, aff1nities, and distribution," in speaking of the high antiquity and organization as well as of the remarkable richness of it, especially in the south-west, near King George's Sound, considers that these phenomena can only be accounted for by the supposition that the country at one time extended far to the south and west. Such of our readers as may wish to study this most interesting subject will find a mine of information in the work above mentioned, also in Mr. Wallace's " Australasia " (Stanford), to both of which works we are much indebted. They will find that this is the true "Flowery Land," and that the name of the earliest British settlement, " Botany Bay," was well merited. Few, if any, of the animals found in this country ' are known in other lands. None of the mammalia are common to them, unless the dingo, or wild dog, be reckoned as indigenous,and mice, of which thirty-one specieshave been classified. On the other hand it has mammalia pe...

USD $20.21

   Dispatch: 3 to 7 business days, stock levels permitting