Among Australian forms we should also mention one or two species of Endotrichella, Orthorrhynchium, the beautiful Braithwaitea, three species of the handsome Thamniella, and a few species of the tree like branched Hypnodendron. The Ptychomnium aciculare (Brid.), common in the southern hemisphere, is also found in Queensland.
In addition to Octoblepharum albidum and Rhizogonium spiniforme, found everywhere in the tropics, there are in Queensland several species of the last-named genus.
The genus Macromitrium has many representatives in Queensland (more than ten species). Furthermore, we may here mention several species of the genera Papillaria, Hypopterygium, and Rhacopilum.
The moss flora of Queensland, little as it is known, already presents a type widely differing from the European, and the future will doubtless bring forth many interesting discoveries in this extensive colony.
Of liverworts but few (eighteen) have yet been found in Queensland, but there is a prospect that our knowledge of this interesting group in this country will be supplemented before many years.
IV
FAUNA
Chlamydosaurus kingii.
It is evident that Australia is the country which has been least changed in the later geological time, being now in the main as it was in the early part of the tertiary period. It has also been called a land forgotten in the cretaceous period by the development of the earth. This “land of the dawning” reveals to us a corresponding primitive and peculiar animal life, as well as flora with its proteaceæ, leafless casuarinas, and acacias, which remind us of the vanished vegetation of the elder tertiary period. The major part of Australia’s mammals consists of the remarkable marsupials, which belong to the very oldest and lowest organisation of all known mammals, and which have, without doubt, survived from an earlier geological period, during which they were also found in Europe. Among birds the country has some remarkable species (Megapodidæ), the only ones in the world that do not hatch their eggs themselves but, like reptiles, bury them in earth-mounds, whose elements of fermentation produce heat and thus hatch the eggs. The two coursers, the emu and the cassowary, when we except the kiwi-kiwi of New Zealand, have more rudimentary wings than any now existing ostrich.
In the tertiary period Australia is supposed to have been much larger than it now is. It is thought to have included New Guinea and Tasmania, and possibly to have extended eastward to the Fiji Islands. According to the celebrated naturalist Mr. A. R. Wallace, this hypothesis is absolutely necessary in order to explain certain facts connected with the Australian fauna. As already stated, remains of remarkable gigantic marsupials have been found. They lived chiefly on grass, and are not supposed to have had a higher organisation than those now existing. Placental[[24]] beasts of prey that could disturb the existence of these giants not having been found among the fossils, Wallace is of opinion that the latter became extinct on account of physico-geographical, and particularly climatic, changes taking place at the same time as the ice period appeared in the rest of the world. As a remarkable fact it may be mentioned that remains have recently been found of the gigantic moa (Dinornis), a genus hitherto supposed to have been found only in New Zealand.