| Show A fossil continent if an intelligent australian colonist were suddenly to be translated backward from collins street melbourne into the flourishing woods of the secondary geological period say bay about the precise moment of time when the Engli bli chalk downs were slowly accumulating speck by speck on tho the silent floor of some long forgotten mediterranean the int intelligent elligen t colonist would look around him with a sweet smile of cheerful cheera ua lecog recognition and say to himself in some surprise why this is just like australia the animals the trees the plants the insects would all more or less vividly remind him of those he had left behind him in liis his happy home borne of the southern seas and the nineteenth century the sun would have moved back OIL on the dial of ages for a few million summers or so indefinitely in geology we refuse to be bound by dates and would have landed iani at last to his immense astonishment pretty much at the exact point whence ho he first started in other words with a few needful qualifications ficat ions to bo be made hereafter australia is so to speak a ossil fossil f continent a country still in its secondary age a surviving fragment of the primitive world of the chalk period or earlier ages cornhill magazine |
