50 ON THE FOSSIL FLORA OF THE COAL DEPOSITS OF AUSTRALIA, 



these fossils have never been found in the Newcastle beds. But 

 one Glossopteris had been found associated with the same fossils in 

 Tasmania, and as Glossopteris is the common form in Newcastle he 

 thus correlates the whole. 



In 1878 the Rev. W. B. Clarke published the 4th edition of his 

 Sedimentary Formations of New South Wales. This was decidedly 

 the most valuable of all this geologist's writings because of the 

 appendices with which it was illustrated. In Appendix XIII, a 

 list is given of all Australian fossil coal plants known to the author. 

 In Appendix XVIII, there is a tabular view of the schemes of 

 arrangement by different authors of the paleozoic fossils of the 

 New South Wales sedimentary rocks. Mr. Clarke's final view was 

 confined to regarding all above the Newcastle series as " supra- 

 carboniferous." There is in Appendix XX, a correlation of Aus- 

 tralian fossils, exclusive of marine, by Dr. O. Feistmantel, from a 

 MS. letter of February 1878. There are also extracts from letters 

 of the same paleontologist pointing out the resemblances and 

 differences between the Australian and Indian coal beds, the latter 

 being regarded by him as probably of Triassic age. 



In the same year, 1878, Mr. W. T. Blandford, F.R.S., deputy 

 superintendent of the Geological Survey of India, published a 

 paper entitled " The paleontological relations of the Gondwana 

 System," a reply to Dr. Feistmantel.* In this paper Mr. Bland- 

 ford controverts the age assigned by Dr. Feistmantel to some 

 subordinate members of the Gondwanas, and lays much stress on 

 the paleozoic age of the Australian coal, which has fossils in 

 common with the Indian beds, and which consequently should be 

 considered paleozoic also. 



In this year also appeared at Cassel, the first part of the work of 

 Dr. Feistmantel on the Australian Paleozoic and Mesozoic Floras. 

 This has been already referred to. The second part appeared in 

 the end of 1879, and in 1880 the same author gave an abstract of 

 his views to the Royal Society of N.S.W., in a paper mentioned 

 previously. 



* Records of the Geol. Survey of India. No. 1, 1878, Vol. XL, p. 145, &c. 



