president's address. 645 



Judging from these facts, there is little doubt that in Permo- 

 Carboniferous times an isolated Austral region of vast extent 

 existed. 



The disco^'ery just referred to can be best described by quoting 

 from a Note in " Nature," Vol. Lii., p. 523 ; and its importance 

 is expressed in an extract from a letter of Mr. W. T. Blandford 

 to the same journal, Vol. lii., p. 595 :— " The latest number of 

 the Records of the Geological Survey of India contains a trans- 

 lation of a paper by Dr. F. Kurtz on the Lower Gondwana bed.s 

 of Argentina (from Revista del Mus. de la Plata). In this is 

 recorded an important discovery of plant remains in shales at 

 Bajo de Velis. These fossils are well preserved, and while being 

 quite different from the Argentine plant-remains already found, 

 show a close affinity to the plants of the Kaharbari beds of the 

 Lower Gondwanas of India, as well as to those of the Ekka- 

 Kimberley beds of South Africa, the Newcastle and Bacchus-Marsh 

 beds of Australia and the Mersey beds of Tasmania. The 

 previously known plant-bearing beds of Argentina consisted of 

 two series — one containing a Rhaetic flora, resembling that of 

 the Stormberg (Upper Karoo) beds of South Africa, the Hawkes- 

 bury beds of Australia, and the Rajmahal (Upper Gondwana) 

 series of India; the other containing a flora of Lower Carboni- 

 ferous character. The newly discovered flora must be intermediate 

 in age between those two — -that is to say, it cannot be older than 

 Upper Carboniferous, nor younger than Triassic ; and with it 

 must go the flora of the important coal-bearing Upper Gondwana 

 beds of India. These have already been assigned to the Uj^per 

 Carboniferous (at lowest) by Messrs. Medlicott and Blandford, 

 and the Indian Survey, and the new discoveries in Argentina give 

 a satisfactory confirmation of their views." 



Writing on this discovery Mr. W.T. Blandford says (see "Nature," 

 LiL, p. 595) : — "It is difficult to understand how two floras, differ- 

 ing from each other far more widely than do an}^ two con- 

 tinental floras living on the earth's surface at the present day, 

 can have co-existed, unless there was for a long period of geological 

 time a o^reat southern continent — the Gondwana-land of Suess — 



