WCP469

[1]¹

Replies to D^r. A. Russel Wallace's Criticisms on my "Origin of Australia".²

(Much condensed.)

1. Objections to the suggested Recent origin of the Marsupialia.³

a. Their anatomical & physiological distinction from the Eutheria⁴

Unfortunately neither Parker & Haswell's Text-book,⁵ nor Oldfield Thomas's last Brit[ish]. Mus[eum]. Cat[alogue].⁶ are to be found in Brisbane. But I have Lyddeker & Flower,⁷ and I enjoy the privilege of the friendship of M^r. De Vis,⁸ who knows much more about Marsupials than the English naturalist's[sic] are aware of, because Queensland won[']t publish scientific memoirs. De Vis' collection in the Q[ueens]l[an]d. Museum⁹ is unique and I have worked over it with him, & also with Ogilby¹⁰ the author of our best cat[alogue]. of Aust[ralian]. Mammals.^{11, 12} I don[']t think the books I can[']t consult would do more than help complete the anat[omical]. & phys[iological]. structure, and I have heard of no great discovery, save the very remarkable (and in my view) significant discovery of traces of placentation in certain marsupials ^and of true teeth in Platypus.¹³ That the Metatheria¹⁴ have, now, structural and functional differences from the Eutheria is surely not surprising. If the Eutheria are descended from the Metatheria of the Trias[sic]¹⁵-Jura[ssic]¹⁶ (of which there is not one particle of evidence, but a bushel of assumption) surely with the great, the fundamental change in the all-important function [2]¹⁷ of nourishing the young may have been accompanied with many and great modifications of structure, of which the formation of a true corpus callosum¹⁸ seems to me to be the most, or one of the most remarkable. The embr[y]onic placenta and the platypus's embryonic teeth seem to me to prove (if they prove anything) that the Metatheria had a placental ancestry. What other explanation is there?

Huxley,¹⁹ I remember, pointed out to us that the pectineus muscle²⁰ of the abdomen of the dog represents the pubic bone (or cartilage) of the marsupials. I have just looked it up in his Anat[omia]. Vert[ebrata]. Au[stralis]. (1871) p. 417.²¹ "This fibro-cartilage appears to represent the marsupial bone,²² or cartilage, of the Monotremes²³ and Marsupials". There is, then, no inherent difficulty in turning a dog into a Thylacine-like²⁴ carnivore, whose pubic bones are not ossified.²⁵

The interacting reptile-like (Theromorph)²⁶ shoulder-girdle and humerus of the Monotremes is not more striking than the mammal-like hoofed Theromorphs themselves: indeed these delightful creatures only seem to have escaped becoming mammals by a fluke, they died instead of sticking to their theme. And remember we had Dinosaurs in Australia in the Cretaceous.²⁷ They didn[']t forget to leave their cards to show they had called on us, like as while all the Marsupials forgot to do so! And they were land animals just as are Kangaroos.²⁸ Why is the geological record imperfect only for the ancestral Marsupials?

Then as to the teeth. That the general structure reminds one of, in some cases the tri^tuberculate type²⁹ and the peculiar Plagiaulax type³⁰ as well, we all know. But it does not tell against me that I can see. Lemurs³¹ have tri^tuberculate teeth and they are pretty high up the Eutherian scale. But if we take the dentition as a whole I cannot see that it is archaic. A Kangaroo[']s incisors are better grass-cutters than a horse's, as we bushmen know, who so often lie and watch our horses feed when we are 'out back'. A horse pulls up as much grass by the roots as it cuts. Horses destroy pasture; Kangaroos don[']t, neither do cows. You can turn a bullock into a paddock (as my farmer-planter [3]³² son-in-law demonstrated to me last week as he pouched divers coins) for a shilling a week, but a horse costs you eighteen pence. And marsupials don[']t have to fool about with all the nonsense of milk-teeth (which were evolved for the benefit of dentists and teething-powder patentists) but start life with a serviceable gum-full, only dropping one milky-one to show they are not proud. I have it from the wallaby's³³ own mouth that his ivories are quite up-to-date tools.

I may say I took the trouble to work out, and draw, the dental scheme of all the mammalia, recent and extinct. Then I undertook a task almost comparable with your own gigantic work on the Dist[ribution]. [of] An[imals].³⁴ for I worked out in time and span every genus of animal, and most of the species of mammals, making diagrams of range geologically and zoologically. It was a long job, often irksome, and in the end not satisfying for wan lack of modern transactions of societies[?] &c. with which we are only poorly furnished out here. I did the same for Queensland plants. Not till I had digested this material did I allow myself to run riot. All sorts of new views kaleidoscoped themselves into my noddle, old ones took on new aspects, and there is m[a]terial enough for a lot of papers. Of course when I started in I thought I knew most of the evidence, also that lots of folk had done the same thing — Zirkel[?]³⁵ I found (too late) had — but it was good training. But it made me wonder more than ever how it was you survived the Dist[ribution]. [of] Animals; that work isn't shut for months at a stretch with me. I tell you this to show I did know & weigh the evidence.

I admit there are difficulties: these are everywhere: but I still think my explanation solves many of them & leaves unsolved fewer than the old notions. What I deem essential to my view is

a. That the Australian Marsupials are not the descendants of antecedent marsupials in Australia³⁶

b. That they were evolved [sic] in Australia from Asiatic types which were probably placental.

[4]³⁷ I wouldn't even mind giving up (b) if I could find any evidence of any Asiatic or oldworld [sic] Marsupials of Australian type. Didelphys³⁸ [sic] is out of court. He is as distinct from an Australian as a blackfellow³⁹ is from a Choctaw⁴⁰. He didn[']t get as far east as the Siwaliks⁴¹. Anyhow if he did it is curious he was so shy as to decline to leave any remains.

Then there is the very glaring fact that our Marsupials have worked out the same ideas as the Eutheria (Geog[raphical]. Dist[ribution]. [of] An[imals]. vol[ume]. i. 391) "wolves, marmots, weasels, squirrels, dormice, gerboas" — showing they not only could but did change immensely. Tho[ugh]' it is convenient to call the Marsupialia an order, it has done damage by hiding the fact that it is not in the least like any other order, but like an epitome of the lot.

Much, of course, depends on one's cast of mind as to the weight one attaches to evidence. To me, I still confess, that the anat[omical]. and phys[iological]. differences bet[ween]. the Meta- and Eutheria are more readily explained as having developed in corellation [sic] with the marsupial habit, than to suppose them descended from ancient marsupials from the old world of which not a single trace has ever turned up in any part of the Old or New World — whose very existence is undemonstrated — or even that they descended from old Australian forms which just as persistently refuse to come to grass, though other land animals, Crec Dinosaurs, are by no means so blushfully [sic] modest.

Though it has no bearing upon my views, I may say I am not convinced that the Trias[sic]-Jura[ssic] creatures were marsupial! True they have the inflexed ramus,⁴² but that isn't necessarily marsupial — the jaw of Thylacinus is not inflexed. True the teeth are like marsupial teeth, especially Plagiaulax, but then so are other teeth (Creodont)⁴³ are of similar type. The only absolute proof is in the pubic bones and these have not been found. The critters may be good pouch-bearers — only nobody can say for certain. Here's another heresy.⁴⁴

[5]⁴⁵ This is, perhaps, the place to make a remark or two, and demonstrate how entirely incapable I am of sitting thumb-ter twiddling, and feeding without metabolising, ^upon the solemn dicta of museum-bred naturalists.

You see (with horror I know) that I do not look upon the 'Proto' theria⁴⁶ as proto one scrap, but as 'ultra'-theria, the blessed omegas and not the alphas of the mammals. To folk like you and me who have spent our lives out-doors, seeing and watching, instead of cutting up spirit-hardened corpses[,] Natural History (which Huxley sneered at, vide "Crayfish"⁴⁷c[h]ap. 1. p. 4) is the great thing after all — how the animal or plant lives and moves & has its being. No scalpel, section-stained, slice of somite⁴⁸ or parenchyma⁴⁹ can really reveal how the being fits into its place, and enjoys its little life. Guesses about meanings from chromic acid[-]hardened specimens don[']t count with me as the value of one copper sequin. Now Echidna⁵⁰ (he lives opposite me) is a hedgehog,⁵¹ he is also a porcupine⁵² (and I've eaten all three, and proclaim them very good), and he is also an Anteater. And Echidna is a Monotreme, and the Hedgehog an Insectivore and the Porcupine a Rodent. And all have grown quills and striped them black and white, and all do the celebrated ball trick.⁵³ Now here we have three genera as widely different as possible, all adopting the same habits and all going in for the same armour, and all are members of the same school of decorative art. Everybody knows these little facts. But nobody draws the obvious conclusion: similar adaptations have been invented over and over again.⁵⁴ And just as Dendrologus⁵⁵ [sic] climbs like a squirrel (I have had him as a pet) so does your old acquaintance Synetheres,⁵⁶ who ^{by the way} has also hit upon the same prehensile dodge as Marsupial Didelphys [sic] and primate Cebidae,⁵⁷ and if you doubt the prehensile-ability of our marsupials, let one of our [6]⁵⁸ opossums curl his clammy, bare tail round your neck — they are as loving as our's [sic] little grandchildren.

Now, to get back to our mutton⁵⁹ our Echidna, spurned, snubbed by the scalpel-monger as a poor old only-half-dead fossil who has sneaked an unworthy existence because his home from heaven-knows-when had shut its doors against the higher aristocratic eutheria, holds its own not only against native carnivores, but against dogs, cats and foxes and that most deadly of exterminators the human kid. He shows that he is perfectly able to hold his little own not only against his natural foes, but against the foreign enemies who love him as a dainty. I decline to call him a survival [sic]: he is a most especially specialised and triumphant success.

Then there is my friend Platypus — I have just spent a month with him. He is no shirking, creeping, contemptuously-let-alone survival [sic]. He is as alert as a beaver, and if he hadn't as good fur as that trowel-sterned rodent, would hold his own too. It is no slouch of a job to capture the fertive [sic] platypus. I won't admit him as a mere half-forgotten survival [sic]. He is more highly specialised than a politician at any rate.⁶⁰

And this heresy suggests another, re brain power. I see Ray Lankester,⁶¹ in his 'Extinct Animals'⁶² for children (in which by the way he says, p. 64, "there are no aboriginal placentals in Australia", and draws a map to show he hasn[']t made a slip) prattles about the modern animals having survived because of their bigger brains (p. 150 &c.). Now this is Moonshine. The pin-head ganglion of an ant or bee works as big problems as the brain of [7]⁶³ a cetacean⁶⁴ or of (that lower and less useful animal) a clerk. Nor is it a fact that complexity of brain necessarily indicates greater intelligence; the brain of Echidna is convoluted, that of Platypus hardly at all, but I can[']t see (I don[']t use[?] mind's eye seeing in a museum chair, but body's eye seeing in the bush with the creatures doing as they care to do and not as they ought to do if they had fed on text books as recruits are on drill book[s]) that M^r. Duckbill⁶⁵ is one whit less canny than M^r. Pipe-nose⁶⁶ with his puckered lobes. Brain size has clearly little to do with intelligence, even comparative brain size, and it is not true that the marsupials['] brains are smaller relatively or actually than the brains of Eutheria. Bastian ("Brain", p. 260)⁶⁷ for instance shows the relation to body weight as

"Very small Marsupial 1:25

Great Kangaroo1:800"

and in monkeys as

"Marmoset 1:20

Gorilla :200"

If relative weight per se meant much then canaries and tom-tits with 1:14 and 1:12 would be F[ellow]. [of the] R[oyal]. S[ociety].'s and Man, 1:36 would be tamed by the birds as he was by the horses in Gulliver^{68, 69}. It is not the size, actual or relative, or the brain, nor even its complexity, that tells, but the use made of it. The brain is the tool of the mind, and just as⁷⁰ a Papuan⁷¹ can carve ornaments as well as a Grindling Gibbons⁷² without a scrap of iron. It is the thing behind the brain that makes the best use of its opportunities. The brain is no more the mind than Patti[']s⁷³ vocal cords are Gounod's Handel's [sic] "If with all your heart".⁷⁴ All you have written tells me you see this. And since Tylor⁷⁵ & I were mobbed at the Linnean Soc[iety]⁷⁶ for saying plants did a bit of thinking (only Mivart⁷⁷ & Seebohm⁷⁸ backed us up) I have grown more & more convinced that there is nothing whatever mechanical in Life: it acts through mechanism,⁷⁹ just as my pen is acting now, yet I am not a pen, and this world of life (since 'Man's Place'⁸⁰ I mustn[']t say Universe of Life) is not the pen-sylvania materialists babble about.⁸¹ But there is some truth even in [8]⁸²foolishness (even in Mrs. Eddy⁸³ perhaps), and the higher the animal (vertebrate) the larger & more complex the brain. The complex brain is the labour-saving, the specialising brain, and tho[ugh]' intelligence up to a certain level is not gaugable [sic] by brain, the pioneer work along the frontiers of advancement is all done with the aid of the bigger, more complicated brain. You can[']t make a watch with an axe, but if you want to make a watch you think the watch first and then fashion appropriate tools. In other words we are not boosted up from behind by Nat[ural]. selection, but dragged up by the nose by sense of need. I know this is the unpardonable sin, but you are in the world to forgive sinners. You won't 'brain sue'[?] 'cos [because] I have an arm-full of vaccination scars!!⁸⁴

The object of this anabasis⁸⁵ is to get back to the Hellas I set out from, and to close with a final, three-decker heresy anent those marsupial anatomical physiological vagaries which you deem fatal to ewe[-]lambs of my own rearing. The fact is (i.e. Dictator Skertchly proclaims it)

We are all WHITED SEPULCHRES, full of (ontological) DEAD MEN'S BONES!⁸⁶It is the outside of the platter that matters. The only part of a creature that matters is his OUTSIDE.⁸⁷ His chittlings⁸⁸ are only ways and means. His only object in life is TO LIVE. Practically only his outside does live, his insides only help him to live, and he gets along the best way he can with what packing he has got. If his double brain (which seems for the most part ^a superfluity) w has no corpus callosum worth bragging about he gets on just as well by means of other commissural fibres. Folks without a c. all c[orpus]. call[osum]. are not all idiots, nor are folk with one c[erebral]. hemisphere atrophied all fools. Nobody has yet shown what use benefit it is to have two brains, one isn[']t a reserve brain surely. If all this fuss and pother [sic] from Amphioxus⁸⁹ to Keir Hardy⁹⁰ is to provide a means of escape when you have deservedly been knocked on the head, why not continue the scheme and give us a sheaf of wooden legs stowed in a flap and a pocket-full of glass eyes against emergencies? Of course I am a Sauropsid⁹¹ and sling [9]⁹² my aortic branch over my left bronchus,⁹³ but if (with the other reptiles) I cocked it over the right bronchus, or if I took to nucle nucleating my red blood corpuscles, or still more if I stowed my food[-]pipe in front of my windpipe (and so avoided the ever-present dread of a crumb in my throat) without having to put a lid on it, don[']t you imagine I would just as readily cover this paper with vain imaginings? Should not I be much more comfortable if I had not wasted my valuable substance in the way of a tail, and were sitting here holding my pipe in my caudal finger while my paws were quill-driving? No Sir, it's to the outside & not the inside one has to look to see things in their true light: your superficial man is your only deep thinker! It was the old naturalists, like you, who went out for to see how the reeds shook in the wind that knew nature, and not the folk who (like Poulton)⁹⁴ would infer that monkeys fed on artificial flowers because they annex[e] bonnets in the zoo, or who make a handfull of species out of Terias hecabe⁹⁵ in rows stuck on corks. Outside show is nature's first law; which should solace the [female] sex as proving Fashion to be the only genuine goddess. It is this law — so clear clear we do not see it, so close to our noses we look beyond it, that has made the Thylacine put on tiger stripes, and the dasyures⁹⁶ put on the simulacrum of the pole-cat,⁹⁷ and made the gopher and the Perameles[?]⁹⁸ like a mouse and Chaeropus⁹⁹ to put on planduk's¹⁰⁰ [sic] legs. We have got to look round again at Nature in nature: and to see the crown and leave muck-raking awhile. In the The 'native bear' is a little bear (and a delightful little chap he is — the despised unprofessionals [sic] saw real analogies when they called Centropus¹⁰¹ a pheasant.¹⁰² "Nature's mighty law is change", as Burns¹⁰³ hath it, and things have changed and found out the same little tricks and dodges often and oft, and things are what they seem in spite of Longfellow.¹⁰⁴ Of course cabinet, dry-skin, formalin science is science, but it is not all science, and ^but the knife and the lens only go superficially deep while Nature, bless her, remains deeply superficial.

[10]¹⁰⁵

2. Animal and vegetable remains not preserved under the same conditions.

There is much truth in what you say (or you couldn[']t say it) that "The conditions for the preservation of the two are quite different". But if you come to analyse this statement it comes to this, that animal remains being strong bones, can be preserved in beds, such as gravels, which could not preserve delicate vegetable tissues. But the corollary is not true that animal remains cannot be preserved, or at least as a rule don[']t happen to be preserved, in the beds rich in plant remains, neither is it a fact. And even if it were a fact it would not affect my argument. Now I'll demonstrate:—

You cite the Sivaliks, Pikermi¹⁰⁶ &c. True they are not plant beds, & one wouldn[']t expect much vegetable matter (there is a good deal) for the simple reason that aquatic plants don[']t live, can[']t live, under conditions where gravel is forming — gravel banks are in swift-running water and the gravel is always shifting.

But if you take cases where plants did live and animals could live you find both together in plenty. You can[']t have remembered the Forest Bed of the Norfolk coast¹⁰⁷ with its glorious yield of mammals (39 sp[ecies].) which were the joy of old John Gun's¹⁰⁸ [sic] heart and are the pride of the Norwich museum. How about the rich animal and vegetable remains of the lake-dwellings, and of our peat bogs? But here is a case you can[']t know: I find that on the Darling Downs,¹⁰⁹ the richest of all the old marsupial fields, they are all associated with [11]¹¹⁰ an incipient peat our folk know as "black soil". It is impassable as any bog in rainy weather, but is not forming now.

You further say " my argument "is founded upon the abundance of tertiary¹¹¹ plant remains, with the total absence of mammalian remains". Yes and I say it again, shout it as loud as I can. I'd have it cut deep in large characters on public monoliths in all high places. Don[']t you see how powerful the argument is? If I had founded my argument upon the absence of animals and plants in the same beds I should have been talking foolishness. Take one of your own illustrations re the London Eocenes.¹¹² You see animals and plants do occur in them "but not in the same beds". What I say is that the mammals do not occur in any of the beds. They do both occur in the Eocene, and in every formation above it in all parts of the world but Australia. They don't occur in any Mesozoic¹¹³ bed, and in none of the old (Palaeogene)¹¹⁴ tertiaries. It is not their absence from certain beds but from all that is the crux. The oldest Australian marsupial is Wynyardia¹¹⁵ from the so-called Oligocene^{116, 117} of the N[orth]. coast of Tasmania. And (though I don't urge this) Dun,¹¹⁸ the palaeontologist of the Australian Museum (Sydney)¹¹⁹ tells me they have been making our Tertiaries too old because many of the mollusca named as extinct are really living spp. [species. pl.] [.] A good deal of old palaeontology was of this nature.¹²⁰

Then you ask "Are not their rich Tertiary deposits you refer to all in Eastern Australia? Are they also numerous in Australia Vera[?]".¹²¹ The answer is most are in E[astern]. Australia as you and I see it, because most of Aust[ralia]. Vera has been continental from Palaeozoic¹²² times. But we have quite extensive Mesozoic and Cainozoic¹²³ too. Now these ^continental conditions are favourable to the preservation of mammalian remains in river and lake deposits, but we don[']t find them except in the very late Tertiary, as in the case of Lake Eyre.¹²⁴ And here we have well developed Cretaceous [12]¹²⁵ rocks with a plentiful molluscan (marine) fauna including Plesiosaurus.¹²⁶ It is just as likely to contain mammalian remains as our Trias[sic] or Jurassic, but it does not — but the overlying Pliocene¹²⁷ does.

I don[']t know of any great plant beds of Mesozoic or Tertiary age in Aust[ralia]. Vera comparable with those of Aust[ralia]. Asiatica,¹²⁸ but there are deposits of brown coal &c. which may when examined produce identifiable remains, but as you know coal beds, lignites¹²⁹ and peats are not the best places to find well-preserved plants. But, again, in many parts of Europe the Brown-coal has well-preserved forms. I saw lignites used as fuel in Bohemia¹³⁰ that had layers almost as fresh-looking as say compressed hay from a silo.

My point is not that the marsupials don't occur in the plant beds themselves, but that they are absent from them and all other beds. Look at the millions of tons of old Tertiary deep-lead gravels — the ideal mammalian graveyard — that have been run through our gold and tin sluices without yielding a trace of bone. Every stone passes under observation and bones could not escape. So soon as you come to Neogene¹³¹ Tertiaries, many of the same character, they turn up in plenty. It is their total absence that seems to me to mean their real absence. Never forget you have to invent a totally unknown ancestry; I have not.

Another point we differ upon. You'd make the Aust[ralia]. Vera the ancestral home. I put this as the last place the marsupials reach. Well this, viewed as a problem by itself, must rest awhile upon distribution since neither party can dangle Magna-charter¹³² [sic] -old specimens in the other's faces. Our cards lie on the table, neither holds a flush or a full hand; but I think I can lay over you in point of numbers. I worked out the distribution of all the Australian mammals I could get hold of, with the aid of De Vis and Ogilby and B. H. Woodward's later list for W[estern]. A[ustralia]. (1903)¹³³ with the result stated in my paper. From Q[ueens]l[an]d. to Tas[mania]. the spp. [species pl.] gradually diminish in numbers and the Platypus goes all the way. From Q[ueens]l[an]d. to Aust[ralia]. Vera they also diminish, W[estern]. A[ustralia]. being richest for two reasons, (1) because it has lately [13]¹³⁴ been worked by the collector M^r. J. T. Tunney¹³⁵ who had a brief to get hold of every indigenous beast in the State, and (2) because W[estern]. A[ustralia]. got first in contact with Aust[ralia]. Asiatica the connecting land beginning in the north. Then I see Asia all over eastern Aust[ralia] (mixed with but not very strongly flavoured with Australian) and I don[']t in A[ustralia]. Vera. Oh if you'd come a short trip with me say from Cape York¹³⁶ to Wilson's Promontory¹³⁷ you'd feel like walking about in an unwritten chapter of your own "Malay Archipelago".!¹³⁸

These three two cards, distribution and Asiaticalness [sic] are in my hand and not in yours. But I can't be sure of the trick because the winning cards have not been dealt. I have no ancestral eutheria either from N[orth]. Q[ueens]l[an]d. or New Guinea. This prevented me from euchring¹³⁹ you, but as you hav[e]n't any such cards in your own hand you can[']t euchre me!¹⁴⁰

There are some puzzling problems in distribution. Take the pul Pulmonata¹⁴¹

of Australia, the Operculate land snails¹⁴² of Australia are, according to C. Hedley¹⁴³, entirely confined to a narrow strip (all on the E[astern]. slope) of Queensland and N[ew]. S[outh]. W[ales]. as far south as the Clarence R[iver].¹⁴⁴ Why didn[']t they get west with the marsupials? I won[']t enlarge on this.

3. Australia no sudden floods!!

Let me quote you lest I seem to mis-apply your kindly criticism. "The pres[ence]. of mamm[alian]. remains in countries where rivers & lakes are not frozen must have been due almost always to sudden floods over alluvial plains, marshes or valley bottoms, by which herds when feeding or migrating were caught & drowned, & then were covered up by silt. In a country like Australia, with no great mountain ranges, such occurrences would be rare or absent, except now and then in river valleys emptying into the sea."

I had to stick pins into myself to be sure you had written this. Australia is the land of the biggest and widest-spread floods on earth at the present day. [14]¹⁴⁵ They come on quite suddenly, sweep over hundreds of miles. I have been caught in a forest pretty high up and had to wait days to be fetched off in a relief-boat. I was rowed miles thro[ugh]' forest and cleared land and saw hundreds of cattle, sheep, goats, horses &c. dead and dying, heaping up ashore & floating out to sea. I saw every tree, every house-top alive with snakes, marsupials, goats, cats, dogs and what not. No floods forsooth! Where is Leichardt[']s [sic] party?¹⁴⁶ Surely this is a slip of yours — you are so careful — it fairly puzzles me how you forgot all the history of Australia.

But floods are not the deadliest Australian fossil-makers! Give me a DROUGHT any day for real, pure, healthy destruction. For genuine unmitigated horror give me a drought! Rivers dry all but a few water-holes which rapidly diminish in area; open water-holes (billabongs, &c.) shrinking visibly. All four-footed and winged things thronging the muddy shores crowding in thousands, cattle, sheep & marsupials gaunt with starvation, glassy[-]eyed and black[-]tongued with thirst, that is law without mercy. We are only recovering from loss of millions of valuable beasts, and you (vide 'Man[']s Place') know to the hilt what even one million means! Look in Ray Lankester's 'Extinct Animals' p. 187 and see a Diprotodon¹⁴⁷ bogged! It's not much of a book, but it has many very pretty real pictures, & this is a photograph. It isn't floods that pile up whole skeletons, it is droughts. Floods scatter them far and wide, droughts concentrate them around their graves.

But if you say you don[']t mean now but formerly, say in Mesozoic & early Tertiary times (which you don[']t say), surely Australia in its palmiest days before the two Australia's [sic] joined had an average higher rainfall than now. You and I have seen (e.g.) the deep lead gravels of California; well picture them and call them Australian and see if we hav[e]n[']t gravels and alluvium and brick-earths enough to demonstrate a very healthy riverine state of affairs.

I fear you have not the horse's one toe to stand upon here!

[15]¹⁴⁸

4. New Guinea Fauna.

I have already said the paucity of the N[ew]. Guinea fauna is a back-hander. I feel it deeply; so deeply that it has made me purr as if pleasantly stroked when I saw mammal after mammal recorded therefrom, but alas they gave me fits for they were only rats or their kindred! Why won't somebody thoroughly work that blessed land of mystery well. You might induce Capt[ain]. Lawson¹⁴⁹ to go out and write a new work on N[ew]. G[uinea]. for you to review; we could rely on him to find anything we said was wanted! Only yesterday I helped pack off an entomologist there, but he'll mess his time away looking for the parasites of pests of sugar-cane. I'd go myself only I should surely die and my wife objects to premature burial.

Perhaps I'll have to give up the N[ew]. G[uinea]. route and come via Celebes¹⁵⁰ & Timor.¹⁵¹ I have often said the first bit of Australia I set foot on was Timor. The country back of Dili¹⁵² is very Australioid [sic] in its Eucalypts; so if you can make me a cattle route across that way, I'll admit you have I roped, thrown and branded me — on that point. But though Timor looks Australian enough Port Darwin¹⁵³doesn't look Asiatic enough: it is too Australian; while Cape York is Asia to all intents. Anyway it is quite as Asiatic as Timor is Australian. The "Gulf country"¹⁵⁴of the "Territory" I have not been into, only seen and felt a bit of the coast. It is richly tropical but I take it to be only the Asiatic fringe facing Asia & it was early connected with Cape York peninsula. Timor, too, might possibly be the outlying-est [sic] bit of Australia. Its trend is Australian and not Sundan, and its geology is much closer to Australian than the adjacent Sunda Is[lands].¹⁵⁵ The Australian shoal water runs up pretty close to it, but there it drops down very suddenly into very deep water [16]¹⁵⁶ before Timor is reached. Anyhow Timor is not geologically one of the Sunda group.

New Guinea on the other hand is, at any rate now and was recently, connected with Australia. Physically the two places are practically one since an elevation of seven fathoms (42 f[ee]t) would join them, and there is a set of stepping-stone islands (not coral but rock) right across Torres Strait.¹⁵⁷ Much of the east coast of Q[ueens]l[an]d. is fringed with a plain up to 30 miles wide which is apparently not marine, as no marine species are found in it. It is pierced by numerous wells and proved [sic] to be over extend over 100 f[ee]t below sea-level. No marine Tertiaries occur on this coast though they abound elsewhere. Now if this plain is an old land surface made of river and lake detritus, as those, like D^r. R. L. Jack,¹⁵⁸ who know it best, believe, then N[ew]. Guinea has most certainly been connected with Aust[ralia]. in late Tertiary times. All the coast, as I can personally testify, from C[ape]. York to below Sydney has undergone depression. Sydney harbour is a drowned river valley, numerous islands are outliers of the old eastern extrusions. No geological fact is more patent.

I am quite certain N[ew]. G[uinea]. and Aust[ralia]. have been connected in late geological times. Here is a real passage for mammals, dry shod all the way, if there were mammals to plod it. Anyway I am convinced our Dendrologus and other forest-bred marsupials went north that way and so Cuscus¹⁵⁹ got to Celebes and the Cassowary¹⁶⁰ to N[ew]. G[uinea]. As certainly a lot of trees, shrubs, herbs and insects got over the bridge.

Now comes a bit of evidence I omitted from my paper, having quite overlooked it when writing that meagre abstract. You say, of course rightly, that the N[ew]. G[uinea]. pig is a slightly modified common Sus:¹⁶¹ you suggest he may be quite recent. I don[']t know anything about that — nor do you. But we had an indigenous PIG in Australia who rootled all over the Darling Downs with the extinct marsupials! Lyddeker doesn[']t mention him. Wallace (who seldom missed any good thing)¹⁶² [17]¹⁶³ hasn't enshrined him, and yet he was not rare, and his teeth are numerous enough to show he wasn't rare. De Vis found him: I've handled him. He was christened by De Vis in Proc[eedings]. [of the] Roy[al]. Soc[iety]. [of] Q[ueens]l[an]d. iii, p. 47. 1886.¹⁶⁴

But confound his pig-headedness he doesn't help me. No N[ew]. G[uinea]. swine has ever been known to cross Torres Strait to Q[ueens]l[an]d. And yet this dead pig lived and died out here and was a cousin of the Peccary.¹⁶⁵ His baptismal register is Prochaerus celer. D.V.¹⁶⁶ I shall go and study him up again after your delightful criticism. A South American porker would be most embarrassing; but perhaps he came over by the Shackleton route¹⁶⁷ to look after the Emeus¹⁶⁸ [sic] and Cassowaries. Anyway the S[outh]. American-Australian connection¹⁶⁹ (which is real) is not the route by which our marsupials arrived. The evidence of the marsupial or specially the Australian form of the Patagonian¹⁷⁰ fossils has quite broken down according to Lyddeker, & the N[orth]. Americal fossils, though most probably (almost but not certainly) marsupial have no phylogenic relation to our diprotodons. But this is getting away from N[ew]. Guinea.

All the coast of Q[ueens]l[an]d. is now undergoing elevation, including the Barrier reef¹⁷¹ — lots of the coral is merely awash, some, even near C[ape]. York, is high and dry. I can get onto a raised beach in an hour from where I live, and one which is 10 miles inland from the head of Moreton Bay.¹⁷² If this continues Aust[ralia]. & N[ew]. G[uinea]. will be united before Ireland gets home rule.¹⁷³

Now as the former (late Tert[iary].) connection was complete; as the shallow sea is not entirely due to accretion of coral and sediment but is really the water covering Land whose remains stick out as islands, I simply had to take N[ew]. G[uinea]. as the nearest possible route. You have made me hark back towards Timor & Celebes, my early loves, I mentioned them when I delivered my paper; the writing (which I loathe) was an after effort, and I cut it short from pure ink-nausea.¹⁷⁴ See how blessed a thing is criticism — by a critic. The other sort is cheek. But there is that confounded deep, tho[ugh]' narrow, grove between [18]¹⁷⁵ Aust[ralia] and Timor. But I suppose you'd raft the critters over. I see more clearly now, thanks to you, that if one makes Timor part of Australia, it may have become an isolate 'hoiste' [sic] like Tasmania, by the local submergence of the intervening tract. There is nothing against this geologically, and note Timor faces the most indented part of the Australian coast, where alone there as anything analogous to the fjords of Norway &c, wh[ich]. are submerged valleys. Further we know of Tert[iary]. elevation in Java¹⁷⁶ to 5,000 f[ee]t, so why not depression; and the greater part of the E[ast]. coast of Australia is a rather recent fault line. Then, too, just there in Arnhem land¹⁷⁷ is the only big sheet of basalt of (probable) Tertiary date (I'm not sure it isn't older, but think not) and this as I have elsewhere shown is connected with the older volcanic series of the Sunda festoon.

This would let the mammals into Aust[ralia]. vera, and then wouldn't you come the Corvus¹⁷⁸ over me! But my difficulty is it lets them into the place where marsupials are scarcest, and general Asiatic facies¹⁷⁹ least pronounced, where it is only a coastal feature in fact.

In this case N[ew]. Guinea would be the way out for marsupials to Celebes and not the way in. I had made it both exit and entrance. It would only be the way out for forms adapted to forest or river life, hence Dendrologus and Cuscus. Timor and the adjacent Sundas wouldn[']t be as forest-less as now, for their sub-aridity is the gift of Australia, and can only date from the post-Cretaceous time when the two Australia's [sic] finally federated. It is the dry hot breath of Australia United that has scorched the chlorophyll out of the eastern end of one the once Emerald Isles of Sunda.

The tectonic geology of the Sunda area is interesting. Speaking roughly there are two lines of flexure (sometimes culminating in fracture) at nearly right angles to each other, one N[orth]. E[aster]-ly the other N[orth] W[ester]-ly. The N[orth] W[ester]ly lines then [19]¹⁸⁰ determine the lie of the Sunda Is[lands], which sweeps to almost E[ast]. o[f] W[est]. at its eastern and still further east runs a little N[orth] E[aster].ly — it is a gentle curve in fact, but its shape doesn[']t matter. The point is that along this line, from Sumatra¹⁸¹ at one end to western N[ew]. Guinea there has been a sagging. Hercules¹⁸² at one end holding Sumatra and Titan¹⁸³ at the other end holding N[ew]. Guinea coulding[?] [couldn't?] pull that string of islands straight and it sagged in the middle¹⁸⁴. In other words, the old rocks (Palaeozoic) which make such a brave show in Sumatra dip down in Java and only come up to surface again far away eastward. This great sag does not go very far north, a line from the Malay peninsula thro[ugh]' Banka¹⁸⁵ [sic], Biliton¹⁸⁶[sic], S[outh]. Celebes & Ceram¹⁸⁷ [sic] is entirely along Palaeozoic and even crystalline rocks. The whole of the M[alay]. Archipelago is planned on two main sets of earth-waves whose cross[-]eddies have determined the configuration of this, the greatest archipelago on earth. About Banda¹⁸⁸ is [sic] the forces of disturbance where the conflicting waves meet, and Borneo¹⁸⁹ is the still-water backwater. Borneo geologically is a little Australia. In neither has there been any axial earth[-]folding since Palaeozoic (Carboniferous) times, whereas everywhere else in the area Tertiary foldings and crumplings are the rule. In this again, so far as my evidence goes, Timor is Australian and not Sundan in type.

Now the deep sea S[outh]. of Celebes follows one of the flexures, and when it was (as it were) the crest of the wave instead of its trough Celebes and Timor might easily be sufficiently approximated, if not in actual touch, to tap Asia, without the mammals having to take the longer route via N[ew]. Guinea. I am working at this tectonic question and send you some rough notes & still rougher preliminary maps.

The difficulty about Timor is that it lands its freight on the wrong wharf, as I said before — in the poorest instead of the richest area. This poverty is not due to sterility for the "Gulf Country"¹⁹⁰ our "Never Never"¹⁹¹ is one of the most fertile and best[-]watered parts of Australia. Read "We of the Never-Never"¹⁹² for a most charming and truthful account of life therein. It's a long way from Timor to Cape York and tho[ugh]' the water isn[']t deep I don[']t see my way to open the route. The Gulf of Carpentaria [20]¹⁹³ is only I an extension — submerged — of the old terrestrial plain before alluded to, and I think our Asiatic aliens would have gone ashore long before getting near the custom house at Thursday Island!¹⁹⁴ If Aust[ralia]. Vera is the original place of debarkation why is it poorer in marsupials than Aust[ralia]. Asiatica?

INTERJECTIONS

I had to break off to go to Brisbane, where I happened to catch L. C. Greene,¹⁹⁵ geologist, (see my paper) who I thought was away on our S[outh]. W[est]. border. He'd been driven back by FLOODS. A week previously he had waded a few yards, knee-deep, across a river which at that spot is now 4 miles wide! And a man further off in the plains had been three days out of sight of land in that same flood! How's that for sudden-ness?

I went to the Museum to look up Prochaerus again & talk to De Vis, but he was away. He is nearly 80 and not in town every day, nor was Ogilby there, he is not connected with the Mus[eum]. but often works there, especially at fish. Wilde¹⁹⁶, who was in charge never heard of Prochaerus! So we looked up De Vis' original paper and then hunted for the specimens. They seem to have been misplaced: at any rate no one there could find them! Your delightful letter made me think I had not paid sufficient attention to this curious find, so I must get at all the evidence again first hand, & am not sorry I did not mention it in my paper.

5. Former Extension of Cretaceous.

It is singular how much less urgent the geological evidence is to you than to me, & how you see greater biological stumbling blocks than I [sic]. Is it because I am more geologist & you more biologist? [21]¹⁹⁷ You say "Surely they must be under the Tertiary, or if they are missing they may have been denuded before the Tertiary were laid down". Again you see both points clearly. Now I have been looking for the evidence, and when I put my views before the Aust[ralasian]. Ass[ociation]. [for the] Adv[ancement]. [of] Science¹⁹⁸ in Feb[ruary]. This was the tomahawk my geol[ogical]. friends played and flourished around my brows! Where is your evidence they chanted? [sic] Others, glib-tongued, said "We thought we had settled Wallace on this very point, and lo! here you come, stretch yourself upon his skeleton and breathe new life into him." But they admitted I had made out a plausible case for the defendant.

Now I have got, I think, all the known evidence, at first hand, from the workers, & will draw you a little map of Aust[ralia]. with all the points that bear on the matter & send it next mail. The almost geological length of my this mail's effusions is proof I can[']t get it done this week.

The difficulties are these:— From L[ake]. Eyre south via Spencer Gulf¹⁹⁹ the whole country (so far as explored) is Palaeozoic and this is an area of "rift valley"²⁰⁰ in which one would expect ^Upper Cretaceous beds to be preserved.

On the other hand the ^Upper Cret[aceous]. comes as far south as the N[orthern]. End of Lake Gairdner²⁰¹, whence to the sea the surface beds are not older than Pliocene, with Palaeozoic showing through them in the high ground. But as Eocene marine beds flank both sides of Spencer Gulf from half way down right out to Kangarooo Is[land]²⁰², and as Marine Cret U[pper]. Cret[aceous] runs up the Murray²⁰³ as far E[ast]. as long[itude]. 141°, it is not much to ask that some has been denuded. Then in the S[outh]. W[est]. of S[outh]. A[ustralia]. we get traces of prob[ably]. U[pper]. Cret[aceous]. as far as lat[itude]. 31°, long[itude]. 132. or about 70 miles from the sea, it does look as if there had been an outlet into the Aust[ralian] Bight.²⁰⁴

[22]²⁰⁵

As to denudation, it is not sufficient to suppose it. Though it seems to be an argument from negative evidence, it is not necessarily so, as field work often gives proof. Unfortunately it is just the area where you and I want an outlet for the Opal Sea²⁰⁶ that is least known. The evidence over a large part is neutral, some inclines our way, none (I believe) tells directly against us. If the Cret[aceous]. were still in situ over its old site there could be no argument: the facts would be crystal clear. I think you and I see a little further into the millstone than most geologists — very few of whom have any scientific imagination, and so are mere brickmakers, most useful indeed, but not architects, and they are oft-times too purblind to see a temple when it is erected for them, but oh! they dote on the bricks!

But in some places as e.g. Victoria there is evidence of post-Mesozoic denudation. Hear what comfortable words Reg[inald]. A. F. Murray²⁰⁷, a[lso] k[known] a[s] head of the Vic[toria]. Geol[ogical]. Survey says in his Geol[ogical]. & Phys[ical]. Geog[raphy]. [of] Vict[oria]. [sic] 1895²⁰⁸ (a small but good gov[ernmen]t. pamphlet[)].

P. 101. "The Mesozoic rocks especially appear to have been removed from very wide areas." And again:—

P. 102. "The natural operations which were in progress on what is now the Vict[oria]. land surface were confined, during the latest portion of the Mesozoic & the earliest portion of the Tertiary periods, to denudation and removal rather than accumulation of rock materials".

6. Change of Flora

But the great difference between our Aust[ralia]. Vera and Aust[ralia]. Asiatica is in my opinion, as you saw, only accountable by separation. This grows more clear daily.

[23]²⁰⁹

I am going to revise all I have written thereon. Dean and Johnson²¹⁰ who are our best nature palaeontologists, tell me Von Ettinghausen's²¹¹ [sic] determinations of supposed European genera are unreliable. I shall go over their entire work & judge for myself.

But both these fine men are brickmakers & not architects. Hence they say "If V[on]. Ettinghausen says he's found columns of Pentellic marble²¹² in the Australian Parthenon whereas they are native Australian marble, then V[on]. E[ttingshausen]. didn[']t build a temple at all." This is ky-bosh, ell-bosh[?]. The great point V[on]. E[ttingshausen]. made is that there is a great diff[erence] all over the world, from New Zealand to Greenland[']s equally icy mountains, and across Borneo's [sic] coral strand²¹³ it holds just as good. I have come to the conclusion that in or twards towards the close of the older Tert[iary]. there was a great cosmic revolution, and when I have set Australia on its legs and put my Marsupials in possession of their estates, I shall develop this idea. It has been hatching for a quarter of a century, and you impregnated my tectonic ovum, by the remark that it didn[']t seem rational to think the hypogene²¹⁴ forms were stronger of yore, that the seismic stocking was on the other leg.

To my delirious joy I find Chamberlain²¹⁵ & Salisbury²¹⁶ in their quite new "Geology" 1906.²¹⁷ have some such idea too, hazy but there. He's a fine old boy is C[hamberlain].! I lectured for him on "The Building of Asia" at the Chicago University²¹⁸ about nine years ago, and now I'll lecture him on his own book!!

Can[']t write more. Mail goes in an hour.

The Heartfeltfullest [sic] of Gratitude for your Criticism. | S. B. J. S.²¹⁹ [initials]

Corinda, Q[ueens]l[an]d.

6. 2. [19]10.

"Ad usum hominum omnia creari" (Cicero. Offic. i. 7)²²⁰ is a motto you might use.

[1]

Notes on "Man's Place in the Universe"¹

by Sydney B. J. Skertchly.

I had had many reviews of your book, every one seeming to accuse you of wanting to make the centre of the Universe not in the middle, and as I couldnt believe you to be incapable of understanding that it is usual for centres to be central, I refrained from judging till my itching to read the book was allayed by perusal. The reviewers also said other amazing things as is their little way. And as reviewers are loathsome creatures I am going to turn reviewer for once as there ought to be one Lot² in the Gomorrah of Grubb Street.³

Now this is the sort of book I love. I abhor your American novel which tediously and solemnly lumbers along pointing out the obvious, and wearily photographing the commonplace. Give me a book like 'Peter Wilkins'⁴ or 'Little Lord Fauntleroy'⁵ which draws scenes and people that are refreshingly new, and put one into delightfully impossible situations only to extract us from these by most miraculously incredible applications of the unbelievable. Truth may be had at the bottom of a well:⁶ well let it lie. I like untruth from G. H. Wells.⁷ verb. sap.⁸

I enjoy and appreciate your book all the more because I dont see the force of your big argument! This is not paradox nor flippancy: it is the real expression of my feeling. The uncomfortable sensation that the Great Architect of the Universe seems to have being ^been 'ridiculus mus'⁹ -ing if in all this immeasurable Universe the contents of our museums, galleries and libraries are all that can be shown in the way of intelligent appreciation of the wonders of creation, is one that sits very firmly inside me, as doubtless it does inside lots of worthier bodies. I incline to think [here I speak by way of permission not of commandment] some of our longings, even if illogical, may [2] be deep stated truths, understandable though unprovable. It is the old baseless, but not therefore disproved poste[?] idea "Plato thou reason't well! Else why this longing after immortality"?¹⁰It is a very genuine and general feeling that in the Father's house there are many mansions,¹¹ and it may be that it rather lacks ^needs explaining than explaining away. But I will return to this. The statement that one human soul might outweigh in importance all the rest of the universe savours [to me] of rhetoric more than of argument. Since I know no recognised medium of exchange or standard of value by which souls may be appraised in terms of nebulae. I confess to being a little sorry you didn't let that bit of bathos go, its glitter was Greek fire¹² but not Olympic. The strongest necessity for immortality is based on an instinctive love of justice, of mercy, of recompense for wrong. Shall the clay say to the potter why hast thou made me thus?¹³ Yes, most assuredly if the clay potter string the clay with living cords and set them atingle with physical pain and mental sorrow. It is The daring with which God took on voluntarily this awful responsibility that seems to me a greater deed than spinning the celestial web with ^from shining wreaths of cosmic dust. In this sense man's soul may outweigh in value all the orbs between the four royal stars,¹⁴ but star and soul are incommensurable, and stars need neither forgiveness nor recompense.

Winwood Read¹⁵ voiced all the misery of man in one noble, fearful outburst of pent-up indignation against the self-righteous smugness of endowed orthodoxy in his 'Martydom of Man':¹⁶ but if I remember rightly [its a score of years since [3] I shudered[?] over its pages] the contemplation of so much sorrow and wrong led him to despair without hope of Karma or trust in Nirvana. But the great fact that God does lavish all his powers on the frail skeleton of an ephemeral radiolarian,¹⁷ the fact that He does build up the atom on the plan of a solar system, that He has [if the Electron theory hold good] made matter a property of motion, surely is reason for us to believe he careth for the sparrow.¹⁸

You have found out I love whimsies. Well I get more real solace, more true satisfaction out of the transcendental geometry of Gauss,¹⁹ Riemann,²⁰ Lobachewski,²¹ Bolyai²² & co. and out of 4^th dimensional space, than anything else. It is as refreshing as to be born a youth again, to work out and prove problems on a state of things in which parallel lines meet, and angles triangles have more or less than two right angles tucked into their corners. To be able to see how space may be limited and yet there be nothing outside it, to picture a universe in which straight lines return upon themselves so that you could see a star that was in front of your nose through the back of your head (if you had pineal eye open), to reconstruct Flatland²³ and see one, nay any number, of universes interpenatrate[?], and yet ^lack be unfinable by the beings of another dimension — all this makes life worth the sacrifice it is. When Prof. Bragg²⁴ demonstrated to us in Feb. that two particles of matter could and did occupy the same space at the same time I should have kissed him only I didn't like to set a good example to those others who listened and only thought "how int'restin". Radio-activity taught us a big thing when it showed us that: and radioactivity is pretty Australian. We grew Rutherford²⁵ & made Bragg & now you've got both. And Bragg made the great discovery in Adelaide.

A friend lent me a text-book on 'non-Euclidean Geometry',²⁶ and the [4] problems were better than Hans Anderson²⁷ to me for Anderson[']s ugly ducklings²⁸ were swans ^all along though (as Ben Johnson²⁹ said of Bacon)³⁰ 'concealed', while the non-Euclidean ducklings are genuine ducks that really turn into swans. I implore you to get up 'The Left, Right, and Central Cases', and "endless" and "infinite" will have new meanings and truth. But doubtless[?] you know all this.

You tempt me stronger than a little to write "My Dream[?]-Book" which you so kindly suggest as a fit out-going for my wayward form[?]. I have in sober truth ^long had another whimsy brewing — an immortal philosophy, an unmatchable Principia — and its title is "Topsyturvydom: the only true Philosophy: or the Intellectual advantage of Standing on One's Head". As boys we used to straddle our legs into V's, bend and gaze inverted at the landscape, and see new and changed beauties in old and familiar ^scenes landscapes. I am too stiff now to do it in the flesh: but I always do it in my [one word illeg.]. To see the hitherto unseen you must get aloof. Methinks the Pharisee³¹ 'on the other side' saw that the 'certain man' was playing the confidence trick, while the goody Samaritan, being too close, was taken in nicely. Now from the habit of standing aloof (which you do with least trouble by on your head) I deduce the great principle that:

IT ALWAYS WAS AND ALWAYS IS NOW.

which is the only true doctrine of

THE REAL PRESENT.

Come with me a little yourself[?], O friend after my own heart, and look at this rocky bit of your Universe with me. Upside down with ye! Here! Lo! Thou art on Alpha Centauri³² and it is Valentine's Day 1010 on that Earth speck yonder. You turn your spectro-tele-omniscope upon it and look at the "things" just damp from Printing House Square.³³ What's this! [5] It is dated Oct. 21. 1905!! Ah friend, you wanted to see the result of the parliamentary elections, etc. Well, we have unwound the thread of Time and the four-year-old part is NOW once again. See! there is a great liner slowing down into Albany S.A.³⁴ Who is that hanging over the lee-rail, and what calls he, and what the answer. "Has Port Arthur³⁵ fallen"? "Not Yet!!" Why that is ancient history — maybe, but look yonder where on on the shores of Pechili's Gulf³⁶ stands the grim fortress on archaean grains[?], and you will see the little dauntless Japs plunging themselves, a human spray, to quench the belching fires of Russia's hordes.³⁷ The Past IS present.

No, friend Wallace, I will not wait while you work out the phylogenic connection between the Centaur and the Dinosaur — we are bound for the Back-of-Beyond and our motive force is Something Between a Thing and a Thought and so light lags between us. Come a little deeper into Stella-Land, say so Alcyone the beauty among the fair Pleiads. Now come back to earth and say who is that tall white man, pale and feeble from malaria, lying in a Kadjang³⁸ hut in a lovely tropic isle over which towers the Mountain of Sleep, Jidor.³⁹ You, O friend, tis thy past self and thou has just dreamed thy sweet rarest dream which shall in the near hereafter, and for all time, be [one word illeg.] Natural Selection! The past is never dead, it is the present somewhere. And the past flits backwards into the star-depths so that the news is told from sun to sun and whispered to the misty nebulae. Think of it; somewhere, aye many-wheres, the story of your great discovery is ringing as news in delighted ears. If you flit a few light years nearer Earth, say to the outpost star of that cluster over there, you can see Darwin⁴⁰ writing the 'Origin of Species'.⁴¹ If you like to fly into Star Depths a little faster than light you can [6] roam the Universe as a true prophet by simply reporting what has ^already happened as being surely about to come to pass. With a velocity of c. 185,000 miles a second⁴² Time ceases to exist, and only Space counts: at that speed it is always Now, above ^all it is always the Past which was Now and will be Future when it has been Past long enough.

"Puzzling?" Not a bit of it when you see what Jehovah conveyed to Moses when he said He was "I AM". [EHYEH].

Tennyson⁴³ told someone he'd forgotten what he meant by men raising themselves on stepping stones of their dead selves.⁴⁴ He knows quite well now, for he is permitted an occasional glance at his dead self as he wanders like a firefly. tangled in the silver braid of these same Pleiads we will now bid farewell to. Man is only allowed an occasional peep at his dead self, and very rarely at the dead selves of others. Few there be whose lives bear constant scanning, and to feel that every unworthy deed was still being enacted, and ^lay open to the curious gaze of acquaintances, would be too terrible a punishment even for mortal sin.

"So there is no place of punishment?"

"Oh! dont flatter yourself that way. The Universe is full of hells: that's what the dark stars are for. Everybody gets damned, because everybody deserves it. But they are only damned a bit at a time, the object being reformation. See that bright star down there?"

"Yes, it is Sirius".

"Quite so, and we know its dark companion as Sir R-ius, because it is the [one word illeg.] occupation[?] of good old Prof. Owen.⁴⁵ Come and look at him, he has to serve there once in a geological period till [7] he has purged his continency[?]."

"Why, he looks gay as happy enough! He's lecturing on anatomy, quite in the old way."

"Ah yes. But look and listen. He has to demonstrate the preference[?] of a hippocampus union in anthropoid apes to Huxley's⁴⁶ students; and do it with a smile. Thats where the gall comes in.

"I couldnt imagine Darwin being damned".

"Oh his is a special case. By a sort of family compact Darwin and his grandfather⁴⁷ are being damned comfortably together. Darwin has to learn the Zoonomia⁴⁸ by heart and repeat it to his grandfather. That is hell for both. I call it vindictive[."]

"And what is Huxley's lot?"

"Oh Huxley never was taken seriously by anybody but himself, so he has to sit with the bunch of bishops till he gets a civil tongue in his head. During his spells of penance he has nothing to eat but bacon from Gadarene swine.⁴⁹ He's looked upon as sort of a joke. Look yonder and listen. Right off there where the Milky Way is thickest."

"I see two figures and hear sounds of merriment."

"Yes! You'll recognise one of them directly."

"Why it's Darwin! And who is with him?"

"Lamarck,⁵⁰ of all others (Buffon⁵¹ is too exclusive, he never was[?] here, forgets he is of the Ancien régime). See; they have got a copy [8] of 'Man's Place in the Universe'. Lamarck bought it as the neatest[?] thing in fiction since he nearly pulled the giraffe's head off trying to make its neck longer. He invited Darwin for a week and out to 'go bush' on the frontier among the 'back blocks' of the Universe and get some of the nothing for analysis. Hark to them!"

[Lamarck.] "What a ding-dong, thorough[?] going, transparently honest old iconoclast he is! He has'nt one particle of you wonderful chia-oscuro,⁵² your transcendent power of making fog look like sunshine. His writings are like the vaccine lymph⁵³ he abhors — very taxing[?]. And now he's telling US, US mind you, who've just been leaning over the edge of the ether, that all this parturient-mountain-ism⁵⁴ is for the comfort of little Wallaces! And folk call him modest! Why he is the screamingest of humourites, a sort of inspirated quinterrancer[?] of Mark Twain.⁵⁵ Oh, what a holiday we'll have when we take him on one of these trips."

[Darwin.] "Do be serious Lamarck. You never could understand Natural Selection. He dreamed wiser dreams when he was delirious and up to 104°F than you could in cold blood. He hasn't had our advantages. Wait till he has gone a 50,000,000-year backward journey, and followed up evolution as it took place, like we've done, and you'll find he'll make that a mere jumping-off place for more splendid generalisations than ever. He'll take it all in at a glance, and not want to waste precious time in trivial experiments, like poor Kelvin⁵⁶ whom I onc met the other day blowing his blistered fingers which he'd burnt handling meteors to see if they got any life-germs[?] concealed about them."

And the two shadows passed out of sight and hearing behind [9] Halley's comet.

Imagine it all! To be able to go back and back till the first speck of protoplasm was beginning to make up its mind as to whether it would start as Bathybius⁵⁷ (etymology: Gr. bathos, bosh[?]) or Amoeba, and follow it up through all the geological ages until the human race showed signs of senile decay in Winston Churchill⁵⁸ and Kawit[?]!⁵⁹

"It makes one wonder Skertchly, what one's own punishment may be."

"None can say, but I've heard it whispered that as you have never said a harsh word of anybody, not even of fools, and as your only detected crime was in not giving blind, instant adhesion to 'The Origin of Australia'⁶⁰ you wont be really punished but only threatened. You'll be told that unless you trully repent and steadfastly believe that the Australian marsupials were, like Milton's joys,⁶¹ 'without father bred', you will have publicly to vaccinate Castor and Pollux."⁶²

"And what will be your lot, flippant one?"

"Cant say — dare not suggest. The most awful thing I can conceive would be to have to edit a new edition of Von Hartmann's⁶³ 'Philosophy of the Sub-conscious'.⁶⁴

[Curtain]. [Aurora Australis plays.]⁶⁵

You see I want a bigger Universe than you do. A Universe only some 1800 years radius! Do you think I should be contented if, lounging upon [10] the very fringe of the Universe the oldest ^event want I could ^see on Earth would be Pliny⁶⁶ choking in Vesuvian ashes, or Ptolemy⁶⁷ fixing[?] Venus in Gemini with a proto-astrolobe? No, I want one sufficiently extensive to let me see ^watch Trilobites⁶⁸ ambling about and twiddling their little fringed legs at a Cambrian⁶⁹ sea-side resort, and to watch those archetypal-spiders' ancestors, and see if they did begin using their gullets to think with, as Gaskell⁷⁰ hath it, and so laid the foundation stone of the great V Templum Vertebrarium. However, if I cant pre-empt an allotment of that acreage[?] I'll have to cockatoo⁷¹ it on a smaller selection. [This is pure Australian land-nationalisation slang.] Anyhow, I think you have made good your first point, that the Universe is not of infinite extinct. First round to you.

The second point that we are in the central Galactic plane can also be conceded. A Mr. J. L. Adams,⁷² of Sydney, published in 1905 a little book on "The Milky Way"⁷³ in which he tried to show the Galaxy was a peculiar sort of shadow effect due to the Earth's central position. He supposes, poor man, that all the firmament is pretty evenly star-studed, but that the smaller stars are blotted out with too much light — dazzled out, in fact, like a policeman bull's eyes the sight of a burglar — and that the Earth's shadow mutes down the light sufficiently to render the galactic stars visible. The science of the book is of the airy fairy Lilian⁷⁴ type, but his diagrams might have been drawn for Man's Place. He necessarily has to make the Earth central, and he does it intrepidly. Which leads to

The Third Point that we are not far from the centre of that plane. This is [11] not quite so well established. The magnitude of the Stellar System compared with Earth is so vast that, as you yourself proceed to show, one may be very eccentric indeed and not find it out either by faith or sight. Thy verdict would be Scotch,⁷⁵ but the balance of evidence — especially photographic & spectroscopic — is decidedly in favour of us being in the 'Temperate Zone'.

Point 4 is ancillary to 2 and 3 and stands or falls with them. On the whole (if any opinion is worth recording) I can only say you have made a better case than your opponents: so I'll proceed in the guise of a believer — of a wretched[?] candid frame.

All four theses are simply witnesses brought into court in support of a Heresy so great that my poor little marsupial lapse from virtue becomes orthodox by comparison. This is the ONLY habitable planet! Tatcho⁷⁶ cant prevent my hair from becoming and keeping gray (I mean the few hairs left) when I think of it. It is a problem in one of my favourite studies, the theory of probabilities. Dont imagine Im a mathematician. I am not. I could no more construct an elaborate equation than I could lay an asteroid. But I love them. I can wallow in them. I can enjoy their music though I am neither composer nor instrumentalist. There seems to be a very big syncopated passage in your oratorio 'The Heavens are Telling'.⁷⁷

The most dangerous (and delightful) of mathematical cruising grounds is the doctrine of chances. You proceed (quite accurately) to show that the essential life-conditions are so completely balanced, are in such a state of quasi unstable equilibrium, that it would take very little to upset it, and the chances are infinitely in favour of no other speck of dirt between the Old Orchard⁷⁸ and Old Nick⁷⁹ has ^having made such a mess of it.

I cant write a book to make my title clear to a fair sprinkling of [12] mansions in the skies, but the bovril⁸⁰ of it is this. Protoplasm cant take its victuals hot. Cold swarry⁸¹ suits it; you know Dewar & Dyer⁸² grew Quaker Oats⁸³ (or was it Force or Frame Food)⁸⁴ after cold-storaging them in liquid hydrogen which is'nt a stone's throw from the Absolute Zero of temperature.⁸⁵ And you know that only Salamanders and Devils can stand anything like a mere couple of hundred paltry little not-so-very-far-in-heights. The life-range is, in fact, more limited than the kitchen range.

Verb. sap. And forsooth the sap has a good deal to do with the matter. All life under ordinary conditions is more or less tee-total. It all seems to depend on H₂O, its multiples, and its accommodating cousin hydroxyl, HO. But this is life under ordinary conditions at present prevailing. Yet there are some facts that show greater adaptability. For instance, in wool-scouring the fleeces are treated with steam-heated water close to boiling point (in the old methods the water was boiling), yet many of the boiled seeds germinate. I first knew of this about 1864 when I used to get foreign plants from a dumping ground for scour slurry in a field near Reigate.⁸⁶

During the great drought which lasted 4 years ending in 1899 there was no green thing over hundreds of thousands of sq[uare] miles in our central parts. The ground temperate rose to about 120° and kept so for months at a stretch. All seeds and roots were dust-dry and too hot to handle. Yet a week after the rains all was green as Damscus Valley. The spores of fungi, of rotifiers⁸⁷ &c, &c animal & vegetable are every year but dry, hot dirt, they lie on our (confounded) corrugated iron-roofs for months literally baking, yet at a shower the rolfer[?] (your true Arachne) sets its spinning wheel awhir as if the climate were Elysian. [13]

Some of our marsupials, and rabbits too, do without water everywhere, they are stauncher than Sir Wilfrid Lawson⁸⁸ who 'didnt drink' either, but then he only recognised C₂H₆O⁸⁹ as drink not H₂O.

Doubtless you are right in saying coagulation of protoplasm takes place at about 160°F. But this is mistaking protoplasm and life, which is just what T.H. Huxley was liable to do at any moment.⁹⁰ Now protoplasm is as you correctly emphasise a gelatinous creepy thing, as washy and watery as an Exeter Hall⁹¹ flight of oratory. But the living seed and spore and ovum is not this sort of slime at all, it is as dry as Mill's⁹² logic. The fact the water in it is dry just as water is in slaked lime. And living matter in this pseudo-dead condition can withstand much wider ranges of temperature than we are apt to remember.

Life always seems to me to be as much a thing as electricity is now pre known to be. I can quite easily visualise half-a-pint of life or six ounces of it. And some jugs of the same size are pint-pots and some are quart-pots. A Euploea⁹³ after being well squelched in the thorax and stabbed with a pin will fly away and perform his own marriage-service and devour his own wedding feast as gaily as if he had thoroughly enjoyed your little automological attentions. A Junonia⁹⁵ gives up the ghost at the very suggestion of forceps. You can slay a gorilla with one half-ounce pellet, you can fill up an anteater or a Phascoloarctos⁹⁵ with lead till he is (brains, heart, lungs and all) like a galena⁹⁴ lode, and yet he wont die. There are some things 'full of life' others seem only to have enough to keep their flesh from putrifying. To them it is the 'salt' of life indeed. Now this is only a side-issue, but you can see I imagine you can pack this Life into all sorts of vessels and in all sorts of quantities. This is another heresy for you to pluck faggots for against any Smithfield.⁹⁵ But if you [14] had, like I have, a black bank of vesicular basalt,⁹⁶ at the end of your garden, and if, as it is as this moment, it is sun-baked and bare of any bit of protoplasmic life, and if it should rain tonight, as it probably will, why you could see that barren basalt face creeping with slimy Mostoe[?]. Its Life Life-stuff is there asleep, a shower will wake it — but it would and can and did sleep on and take its death-like sleep for years.

Which leads me to another heresy. My notes, you see, are like some of your favourite roses 'Ramblars'. Protoplasm is much more animal than vegetable. Most landplants (and some aquatic, but there are landbased[?] who have taken to the water) have pinned their faith on chlorophyll, and the land animals have taken a mean advantage of this, and laid on the cabbage the duty of the cow, which ^whose whole duty is to provide for its own wants and not to cadge or become spoon-fed like a Socialist.

But the land is foreign territory, held by right of conquest and effective occupation — the water is the old[?] house — a life on (or in) the ocean waves is the real original life. And plants are land products for the most part, marine algae are much more animal than plant-like, and antherozoids⁹⁷ and spermatozoa and all the many-syllabled non reproductive bodies remain animals to this day, in spite of botanists. A cow cant make a bone to save his skeleton till the cabbage makes it easy for him, but if you ask me to believe a Blue Point Oyster or a Brain Coral Polyp cant, why I dont believe it. There isnt enough chlorophyll in all the seven seas to supply the herrings for one season's catch on the Dogger Bank.⁹⁸ They say, out here, that in some of the out-back townships the folk live by taking in one another's washing. Well the idea that all the sea-fog from the Leviathan⁹⁹ that you cant draw out with an hook to [15] living that you can, and from the Radiolarian¹⁰⁰ that is as restless as a Skertchly to the coral that is [after his wander-year] as stay at home as a snob[?], have to depend, directly or indirectly, upon the vegetation in the sea, appears as tall an order as it is to be asked (as we are) to derive all the kerosene Gilead P. Beck¹⁰¹ dreamed of from the distilled flesh of dead marines, or all the phosphate deposits from the dry bones of geological Elijah grave-yards. I suspect plenty of sea-folk can do their own catering direct from the inorganic stores.

I believe living beings of earth type could undergo, or as I'd put undertake, such wider modifications than at presented by the existing temperature range. Your statement, p.208, about the almost entire absence of reptiles from the artic regions does not get into the gold. Admit the fact; what does it prove? Pheasants, as you and I know and appreciated after a good dinner of Angus[?], are good tropic birds. But then there is the Golden Pheasant of your Plate III. Dirt. An. that I have also eaten, in the biting cold of north China. Havent we seen Humming Birds in snow? Cant you track W. Stripe's pad-spoor over Mongolian drifts? Isnt the mammoth an elephant? Reptiles could live in the artic if they could warm their blood and turn their scales into feather over-coats. Neither the Polar bear not the musk-ox are diminutive fowl, and they do pretty well where a Malay bear and buffalo would die of chillblains. You mustnt argue that because creatures that haven't adapted themselves to cold cant bear it, that other critters that have done so, dont count in the discussion. Doesnt an alpine primrosy thing melt the ice with its flower buds and blossom atop of the névé?¹⁰²[16]

Now to get back to the main point, that the multiplicity of conditions necessary for life under it highly unlikely — you say impossible — for them to have occurred else-where or else-where. Now pardon me if I say this seems illogical.

The fact of these life-conditions having come about, and the extreme difficulty of their simultaneous commingling does not affect the probability of their recurring one iota. If a truly balanced, honestly tossed coin has come down heads 999 times running it would run a first-class miracle very close. But the probability of the next toss turning up tails is still ½ just as it was at first. The events that have gone before have no influence on those which follow. This is what the gambler, even the average thinker, never realises.

Put it this way. Suppose one had to pronounce judgement on the probability of a man working out the idea of Natural Selection at Ternate as a result of having been burnt at sea in the Atlantic.¹⁰³ The chances dont afford sporting odds. Then what are the further chances of a man doing the same thing in Kent because he had found a fossil armadillo in Patagonia?¹⁰⁴ Mix it up with the further improbability of both men having been naturalists in S. America. Suppose now a third man does the same thing because he had to examine timber for shipbuilding,¹⁰⁵ and a fourth because he had looked admiringly upon a ring-straked[?] and speckled mulatto girl!¹⁰⁶ How about odds now?

But if you say all four were engaged upon allied studies, I reply certainly — and nature is on all fours too. It is the directive [17] impulse that led to the same goal by diverse paths. It is parallel development, which to me is one of the clearest strains that a paleontology and astronomy sing to me. The same laws acting upon the same kind of matter everywhere are liable to produce the same results however amazing. But not all the laws acting upon all matter, in all places, at all times. Some laws flow naturally from conditions. There is no by-law issued by the Brisbane municipality against letting your footpath be mowed out with snow. Even granulation[?] (as you clearly see) is conditioned.

I cannot but think that if you apply your own reasoning to the Earth you will see that it cannot exist!! Do you remember Hans Breitmann's¹⁰⁷ German surveyor who fetched up in the Far West after running[?] the levels[?] for the first transcontinental railway? A friend awaiting him arrives at this sapient conclusion (I quote from memory)

"If you kom der blains mich über

Nor by Hoorse[?] nor by Kanawl[?],

I sveres[?] you dis, Herr Schnitzel,

Du Bist nicht here ad all!

What hath been surely may be.

Now I think I can strengthen your case, which is pleasanter than pulling things to pieces. There are not three incomprehensibles but four. And the fourth is this. Mathematicians and Astronomers do not seem capable of appreciating geological and biological facts, whereas [18] geologists and naturalists can assimilate their facts like mother's milk. Sir G. Darwin¹⁰⁸ may unwind the moon till it rubs shoulders with mother earth and I shouldn't dream of saying him nay. My old friend Osmond Fisher¹⁰⁹ may transmute Darwin's moon into a Lunar Aphrodite and make her rise fresh from the foam of the Pacific at my back door, and I shant interfere one noun substantive. But when Sir Robert Bawls¹¹⁰ that in quite come-at-able geological times — say mid Paleozoic¹¹¹ — all this took place, and huge tidal-waves hundreds, maybe thousands, of feet high raged round this earth in a few hours, say three, why then I raise my voice and utter the mystic watch-word Twaddle.

We know no such tides even took place in strategraphic times. We know that Cambrian rocks were laid down as gently in Cambrian times as many are on Cambria's coast today. The very lap of the lip of the tide has proved its tenderness by by lifting each tiny mica scale and mud-flake and laying it ^them smoothly in the gentlest way, piling more hundred and thousands of feet thick without fraying the delicate frustules of a graptolite.¹¹² You and I have seen tropic rivers in flood; but the most devastating debacle that even uprooted a forest and tore the banks to atoms would be a mill-pond beside the postulated tide-wave of the Irish star-gazer. Not only could no living sea-thing survive, but every was coast would be torn to fragments and the debris would be piled in confused banks of agglomerate and breccia¹¹³ miles thick. A raging torrent sweeping round the Equator at a thousand miles an hour! Geology knows it not: geology knows it [19] never took place since Laurentian greiss¹¹⁴ was found. If it ever took place it must have been "ere granite wrought its upward impulse from earth's hearth of fire." Ball's bald book being busted, let us be sane again.

The above-reached conclusion has an important bearing on the Sun's age. The Judging by the character of the Cambrian fauna it is a fair deduction that the earth's climatic conditions have not greatly altered. I mean that I can see no reason why the Cambrian animals couldnt live quite comfortably on earth today, especially as our very old friend Lingula¹¹⁵ is positively flourishing within ten miles of where I write. Of course you give me credit for knowing all about glacial periods and be hot periods &c. What I mean is that so far as evidence goes it was just as cool (sometimes) and just as warm when trilobites lived as when their descendent Limulus¹¹⁶ lives. There is strong evidence for a Cambrian glacial shock.

Now this shows the Sun's heat has not diminished appreciably since Cambrian times at least. And this may mean one or both of two things that must be kept separate. It may mean:—

1. That the time elapsed since the Cambrian is too short to have made any serious draft[?] upon the solar energy — or

2. That the solar energy is being regularly replenished.

As regards the first I can only say that the wider my experience in the field grows the more and more sure I am that we must shorten geological time. Many phenomena show that rapid rock-forming and crustal deforming has been the rule. And paleontology tells the same lesson to many of us. But this does not mean that we may not require all the 50 millions Lord Kelvin allows us. It does mean that we have [20] no pressing need for hundreds of millions of years. I cannot to enlarge on this for want of space.

But to come to the second point. Even 50,000000 years would show very great alteration in the Sun's energy. Yet the Sun is as rigorous as ever and we geologists have proved it. Kelvin wisely hedged by saying 'if' there be some other source of energy his figures might need revision.

There is in Radium such a source, and Strutt¹¹⁷ has shown its geological value. But there are some points that I have not seen touched on by anyone. If, as I do, one [one word illeg.] the Periodic Law as representing a genetic truth, it seems reasonable to suppose that elements of high atomic weight, that is of more complex atomic structure are the most recent that form, and that the Sun must have slowed down a great deal before elements of at[omic]. w[eigh]t. 200 could form. After they did, and, say Uranium originated, it began to break up and the unstable, radio-active, thermogenetic element Radium began to be produced. From this moment the Sun's energy waste would be checked. Radium would form in the Earth long before it did in the Sun because being so much smaller the requisite temperature condition was sooner reached. The Earth's crust may have been well under-way by the time the Sun began making his radium. Hence the era of life may have roughly coincided at its beginning with the era of solar radium formation. This would help us over [21] two styles. It would show how we could have had a Cambrian ice-age, for the general climatic conditions would have remained fiarly constant. And it would explain why the rocks[?] swear the Sun isnt wearing out and the physicists say it is. I throw this out as a hint, but there is more behind.

Luckily for me I got your book and Arrhenius'¹¹⁸ 'Worlds in Making'¹¹⁹ simultaneously and could compare them while fresh. His is a fine work, as stimulating as yours. And he fills the Universe full of life! I think he overdoes what you under-do. I have purposely refrained from saying much about radio-activity as you have not dealt with this side of the question. But it would help you much.

There are several points I might write about, but surely these 21pp. are enough for suffering humanity at a dose. I do heartily and sincerely thank you for one of the greatest treats I have had for years in this my southern exile.

S.B.J.S.

Corinda, Q[ueensland]

5. Feb. 1909.

"Id quoque, quod vivam, munus habere dei."

Ovid.¹²⁰