430 THE PEOCEEDINGS OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY 



with the accuracy which has been reached in the arrangement of 

 the Silurian and Devonian systems in Europe and America. We 

 can only assert that there appears to be an unbroken succession, 

 though probably in a much shallower and poorer development, of 

 the very same forms which have been elsewhere determined. 

 The appendices xiv. — xvi., containing De Koninck's analysis of 

 the Silurian, Devonian, and Carboniferous fossils from New 

 South Wales, sufficiently warrant this statement, though the 

 geographical data are not exact enough to localise the formations 

 precisely.* 



Mr. Clarke has devoted some fifteen or sixteen pages to the 

 history of discovery in the Devonian beds of Australia during the 

 last dozen years, from the time (1861) when d'Archiac wrote that 

 he could not but suspect that there must be a Devonian forma- 

 tion here, though it could not as yet be asserted on Palseontological 

 evidence, to the present year, in which we have seventy-two 

 Devonian species enumerated by De Koninck from New South 

 Wales, and sufficient evidence of a large development of the 

 series throughout Australia, New Caledonia, and New Zealand. 



I may here also mention that the first discovery of an unmis- 

 takably Devonian fish in New South Wales is thus parentheti- 

 cally recorded : — " In March, 1878, Mr. C. S. Wilkinson sent me 

 for comparison, a specimen of fossiliferous limestone from the 

 Murrurabidgee, not far from Yacs, which contains a plate of a 

 Coccosieus, of a triangular shape, studded with tubercles of the 

 same form as those on a plate of M'Coy's C. trigonaspis, but 

 somewhat different, on the whole, from his figure." S. F., p. 18. 



Some fifty pages are occupied, naturally enough, by the 

 old controversy as to the age of the New South Wales coalfields, 

 and though full of most interesting observations and hints, are very 

 difficult, or indeed unintelligible, to the reader who is not familiar 

 with the history of this question. We cannot bat regret that the 

 venerable author had not here systematised his unequalled 

 knowledge of this portion of our geology without reference to any 

 past or present polemics. But the general conclusions at which 



* In iny last addre-s I stated, on what I supposed sufficient authority, that De Koninck's 

 work had established the accuracy of Mr. Clarke's views as to the age of our Coal On 

 examination I find that this is true only so far as the lower coal measures are concerned. 



