Yet, in this particular, Geology and even Botany and Zoology support the Esoteric Teachings. It has been suggested by many Geologists that the Australian native—coëxisting as he does with an _archaic fauna and flora_—must date back to an enormous antiquity. The whole environment of this mysterious race, about whose origin Ethnology is silent, is a testimony to the truth of the Esoteric position. As Jukes says: It is a very curious fact that not only these marsupial animals [the mammals found in the Oxfordshire Stone‐field Slates], but several of the shells—as for instance, the Trigonias and even some of the plants found fossil in the Oolitic rocks—much more nearly resemble those now living in Australia than the living forms of any other part of the globe. This might be explained on the supposition that, since the Oolitic [Jurassic] period _less change has taken place in Australia than elsewhere_, and that the Australian flora and fauna consequently retain something of the Oolitic type, _while it had been altogether supplanted and replaced on the rest of the globe_ [! !].(448) Now why has less change taken place in Australia than elsewhere? Where is the _raison d’être_ for such a “curse of retardation”? It is simply because the nature of the environment develops _pari passu_ with the race concerned. Correspondences rule in every quarter. The survivors of those later Lemurians, who escaped the destruction of their fellows when the main Continent was submerged, became the ancestors of a portion of the present native tribes. Being a very low sub‐race, begotten originally of animals, of monsters, whose very fossils are now resting miles under the sea floors, their stock has since existed in an environment strongly subjected to the _law of retardation_. Australia is one of the oldest lands now above the waters, and in the senile decrepitude of old age, its “_virgin_ soil” notwithstanding. It can produce no new forms, unless helped by new and fresh races, and artificial cultivation and breeding.