prove ; and I trust that Mr. Green, to whose valuable suggestions and help I am much indebted, will shortly be able more fully to corroborate and extend my present views on this subject.
May 26, 1869.
E. Story, Esq., M.A., F.L.S., 3 King Edward Terrace, Liverpool Road, Islington, 'N.; F. W. Harmer, Esq., of Heigham Grove, Norwich, and Henry J. Fotherby, M.D. Lond., M.R.C.S., Vice- President of the Hunterian Society, 40 Trinity Square, Tower Hill, E., were elected Fellows of the Society.
The following communications were read : —
1. Notes on the Geology of the Cape-York Peninsula, Australia. By Alexander Rattray, M.D. (Edin.), Surgeon, R.N.
(Communicated by the President.)
Perhaps no country in the world, Papua and the South Polar continent excepted, possesses a greater extent of unexplored territory than Australia. So much of its interior and of its northern or tropical portion (about one-fifth, or 60,000 square miles, according to Neumayer) is still a terra incognita, and so much of its natural history remains enveloped in mystery, that the following remarks with regard to one of its last-settled but still least-known parts may not be altogether devoid of interest.
Altogether apart from the attention long fixed on limited portions of this vast land, on account of its extensive and valuable mineral resources and the gold, copper, and coal found in its eastern and southern colonies, much curiosity of a more strictly scientific nature centres in it as a whole. And geologists are desirous of knowing the special and distinctive characteristics both of the settled districts and of the unoccupied and little or altogether unknown parts, in order to determine their relation to those of the adjacent islands of Tasmania, New Zealand, New Caledonia, and the Indian Archipelago (especially Papua, so close at hand), all known to possess a totally distinct fauna and flora, and of ascertaining whether these resemble or differ from those of other and perhaps better-known portions of the globe, especially their Antipodes in Europe, and particularly Great Britain, necessarily the chief standard of comparison to which English observers turn. Every item necessarily furthers this object; and hence these notes, which form an expansion of a paper read before the Philosophical (now Royal) Society of New South Wales in September 1865.
Australia has been called a land of anomalies ; and its physical aspect fully corroborates the assertion. For, unlike other surfaces, whether insular or continental, instead of having a more or less median mountain-axis flanked by less lofty land, the ridge is here circumferential and closely borders the coast, so as to enclose an extensive, comparatively level, basin-like interior. Thus the low, and
