The animals of Australia : mammals, reptiles and amphibians / by A.H.S. Lucas ; assisted by W.H. Dudley Le Souëf.

  • Arthur Henry Shakespeare Lucas
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The animals of Australia : mammals, reptiles and amphibians / by A.H.S. Lucas ; assisted by W.H. Dudley Le Souëf. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The Animals of Australia. INTKODUCTION. Australia is the great Island Continent. During the periods of time called by the geologists Recent, Pleistocene and late Tertiary, portions of it have been separated as the i.slands which appear around its coasts. The general Fauna and Flora of Bari*ow Island, Iloutman’s Abrolhos, Kangaroo Island, Tasmania, is distinctly Australian, but separation has continued long enough for special species of plants and animals tu ilevelop. Barrow Island has still its peculiar kangaroo {M. isaheUimis), Kangaroo Island had its peculiar Emu, and Tasmania its peculiar carnivorous Marsupials and its distinct race of man. Travelling back geologically we find Australia ■connected by a land bridge to New Guinea. Still further back there would seem to have been a land connection with Timor. Along both of these routes land forms have made their way into Australia. In perhaps Cretaceous times there seems to have existed a long peninsula running from New Guinea and land to the east of it away down to New Zealand. Traces of this round about and long dissolved union can still be read in certain •common features of the faunas and floras of New Zealand and Australia, features not present in those of South Africa or South America. Before this again a dim vision arises of a great Antarctic Continent or Archipelago in which there were connections, probably not all at one time, between the southern ■extremities of Africa, Asia as represented by Australia and New Zealand, and America. And while the relations of Australia to the rest of the world have been undergoing these great changes, the continent itself has by no means maintained its continuity. Tertiary and A
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