Page:Transactions NZ Institute Volume 10.djvu/39

Rh the enormous length of time they have occupied it, not the slightest attempt of divergence is manifested, and apparently as during the untold ages of the secondary era, they are destined to remain in statu quô, so long as the present circumstances obtain. It seems as unsafe to hazard any theory upon their inferiority and adaptability to vary as upon beauty being due to sexual selection, seeing that the most perfect beauty is possessed by certain organic forms which have no organs of perception at all.

The disastrous effects of the ravages of insects in the vegetable world are familiar, and the power of the canker-worm and the palmer-worm to change the character and climate of extensive regions is not a modern discovery. Forests of mighty trees that have withstood the battle and the breeze of centuries, whose hardihood and tenacity of life is great enough to enable them to survive the scorching and charring of their trunks by the fires that sweep again and again through the jungles, quickly succumb under the repeated attacks of myriads of seemingly despicable foes. In consequence of the extraordinary increase of a species of moth, innumerable armies of caterpillars for one or two consecutive seasons devoured the leaves of the red gum-trees in the grand forests of Gippsland, amongst the finest in New Holland, and now the weird skeletons of these, the loftiest trees, some of them, in the world, mar the landscape. For another half century or more, they will remain as memorials of what was once the condition of the shadeless plains, the extent of which men are ruthlessly increasing daily, over which the winds coming off the sea, that heretofore had kept this an Australlan Eden, will cease to part with their refreshing showers, as they once did over the "rain-bringing" trees, and will carry their burthen on to the cool mountain slopes.

The upheaval of the central region of Australia has been alluded to. The process goes on, and what is taking place in New Holland, New Zealand, South America, and doubtless in Antarctic regions may be perhaps taken as evidence of the balance of weight becoming in favour of the northern polar ones; those who adopt this theory will deem it strengthened if instead of an open polar sea, it is found that they are covered with ever growing mountains of ice.

The violence of the volcanic action in the far south is felt in the convulsive throes that disturb distant places, and which cause ever and anon a more rapid flow of the great covering of ice, sending off vaster streams of bergs than during periods of rest. The earthquake waves which notified the disturbance in 1868, were certainly followed by such a fleet.

It may be said that a considerable portion of Scandinavia is also rising; this may be a local consequence of the subsidence of a parallel belt of the adjacent ocean bottom, a meridional folding of the crust of the earth, as Mr, Campbell suggests.