Page:Transactions NZ Institute Volume 10.djvu/28

4 It is therefore to be regretted that it has come to be so commonly applied to this one particular era of assumed change in the temperature of the whole globe, that several writers use the terms Pre-glacial and Pliocene as synonymous, even when the consideration of their readers is being directed by them to New Zealand.

This supposed frigid epoch in the earth's history may well, however, be taken as a fresh starting point by those naturalists who agree with Professor Haeckel, in his proposition that during the "Glacial Epoch between these vast lifeless ice continents there remained only a narrow zone to which the life of the organic world had to withdraw."

Where this oasis was exactly situated, "the seed of our coming, the seed of food, the seed of man," as the Polynesians describe their Hawaiiki, is not suggested, but it may not unfairly be presumed to have been in that portion of the globe where survivors of its most ancient denizens remain, the certainly unglaciated regions of Australasia. The southern ranges of Australia proper may come to have their local glacial period by-and-bye. Already heavy snows and avalanches do their work there, and fragments of rock have been carried down now and again from their summits, and deposited as blocs perchés on the sides of the sub-alpine valleys; but no traces of ancient ice action are to be seen. During comparatively recent times on the contrary, there are many evidences that a more equably warm climate prevailed; in the extra tropical portion of the great island continent the extremes became more severe, as the extensive remnants of the inland sea gradually dried up. We find the remains of crocodiles in the river alluviums, 800 miles south of the present range of these animals, in juxta-position with those of the great extinct marsupials; the tropical marine fauna of its northern coasts had also a wider range, and lingered long in the gulfs of the South Australian sea; the set of the currents was probably from north to south, and species unknown on the eastern coast flourished in these mediterranean waters.

It is an old conservative country this Australia—not given to abrupt changes—but now, like other lands in the southern hemisphere, is gradually rising, especially its central regions. In the Great Australian Bight the upheaval is estimated at as much as twelve feet in places since 1825. Earthquakes are frequent, as in other lands undergoing a similar process, but their effects are little felt on the eastern coast, although evidences of elevation in modern times are found from Cape Howe all along the shores far to the north. The shocks usually are not smart enough to produce visible consequences; not even to shake the trees on the slopes of