president's address. 603 



There is no evidence of any Pakieozoic Flora in New Zealand, 

 and it may be doubted whether there was any land at all witliin 

 the present area of New Zealand before the comraeucement of the 

 Mesozoic Era when for the first time coarse conglomerates and a 

 land flora make their appearance. Laud must, of course, have 

 existed in the neighbourhood of New Zealand, the denudation of 

 which su})plied the material for the Takaka rocks. Portion of 

 this may possibly be represented by the crystalline schists of 

 Otago, but probably a considerable area of land lay to the west 

 of the South Island, and has since been denuded away. The 

 eruption of the rare ultiabasic rock dunite is noteworthy as 

 occurring at the close of the prolonged sedimentation of the 

 Takaka system, according to the view of Sir James Hector. The 

 axes of folding in Victoria in the Middle Devonian are very 

 sharp, and their trend was still N.W. and S.E. In Queensland 

 and in the Kimberley District N.E. and S. W. strikes predominated. 

 This is the fifth folding, or fourth important folding, of the 

 Australasian rocks. In Victoria the folding, preceded almost 

 entirely the deposition of the Lower Carboniferous rocks, and at 

 Kimberley preceded the Carboniferous Period. 



In the Upper Devonian or Carbonifero-Devonian rocks of 

 Winburndale Creek, near Bathurst, and at Mt. Lambie, near 

 Rydal, Upper Devonian Beds occur with abundant Sjnrifera 

 disjuncta and Rhynchonella j)leurodon. The earliest type of 

 Lejndodendron australe was found last year by jMr. Clunies Ross, 

 of Bathurst, Mr, E. F. Pittman, the Government Geologist, and 

 myself in those beds. The classification and correlation of the 

 Carboniferous rocks of Australia is complicated and is still 

 nebulous, in Queensland, where the group has been best worked 

 out, there are at least two well marked divisions, the Gympie and 

 the Star, which I think may be referred for purposes of comparison 

 to the Carboniferous Period, although included by the Queensland 

 geologists under the term Permo-Carboniferous. They have not 

 a single species in common with the Burdekin formation (Middle 

 Devonian). The Gympie, the older division, is developed in New 

 South Wales as well as Queensland. It contains Cordaites 



