There “we do not find, in the great masses of vegetation, either the majesty of the virgin forests of America, or the variety and elegance of those of Asia, or the delicacy and freshness of the woods of our temperate countries of Europe. The vegetation is generally gloomy and sad; it has the aspect of our evergreens or heaths; the plants are for the most part woody; the leaves of nearly all the plants are linear, lanceolated, small, coriaceous, and spinescent. The grasses, which elsewhere are generally soft and flexible, participate in the stiffness of the other vegetables. The greater part of the plants of New Holland belong to new genera; and those included in the genera already known are of new species. The natural families which prevail are those of the heaths, the proteæ, compositæ, leguminosæ, and myrthoideæ; the larger trees all belong to the last family.” {257} The prevalent animals of Australia are not less peculiar. It is well known that none above the marsupialia, or pouched animals, are native to it. The most conspicuous are these marsupials, which exist in great varieties here, though unknown in the elder continent, and only found in a few mean forms in America. Next to them are the monotremata, which are entirely peculiar to this portion of the earth. Now these are animals at the bottom of the mammiferous class, adjoining to that of birds, of whose character and organization the monotremata largely partake, the ornithorynchus presenting the bill and feet of a duck, producing its young in eggs, and having, like birds, a clavicle between the two shoulders. The birds of Australia vary in structure and plumage, but all have some singularity about them—the swan, for instance, is black. The country abounds in reptiles, and the prevalent fishes are of the early kinds, having a cartilaginous structure. Altogether, the plants and animals of this minor continent convey the impression of an early system of things, such as might be displayed in other parts of the earth about the time of the oolite. In connexion with this circumstance, it is a fact of some importance, that the geognostic character of Australia, its vast arid plains, its little diversified surface and consequent paucity of streams, and the very slight development of volcanic rock on its surface, seem to indicate a system of physical conditions, such as we may suppose to have existed elsewhere in the oolitic era: perhaps we see the chalk formation preparing there in the vast coral beds frontiering the coast. Australia thus appears as a portion of the earth which has, from some unknown causes, been belated in its physical and organic development. And certainly the greater part of its surface is not fitted to be an advantageous place of residence for beings above the marsupialia, and judging from analogy, it may yet be subjected to a series of changes in the highest degree inconvenient to any human beings who may have settled upon it.