THE GLOSSOPTERIS FLORA. 191 



members of the Glossopteris flora. These beds are now- 

 referred on good evidence to a Permo-Carboniferous age. 

 In South America similar boulder beds apparently occur, 

 but as to these we possess but little accurate knowledge.^ 

 In describing the glacial beds of Australia, Edgeworth David 

 writes : " In the case of Australia, Southern Africa and India, 

 the general direction in which the ice moved appears to 

 have been from South to North. In Australia the thick- 

 ness of the glacial beds (unparalleled, so far as the author 

 is aware, in any other part of the world, being about 2000 

 feet, if the intercalated beds of sandstone and conglomerate 

 are included in the estimate) implies that the Permo-Car- 

 boniferous glacial epoch in the Southern Hemisphere was 

 of prolonged duration." ^ From Bajo de Velis in the 

 Argentine Republic typical species of the Glossopteris flora 

 are recorded from beds which are in all probability homotaxial 

 with those of Africa, Australia and India, and of Permo-Car- 

 boniferous age. From Brazil we have a flora of a rather 

 different character ; it consists in fact of such genera as 

 Lepidodendron and others characteristic of European Car- 

 boniferous and Permian rocks, and unrepresented in the 

 typical Glossopteris flora. Associated with these Northern 

 Coal Measure genera Gangarnopteris has been found, and 

 this supplies a connecting link with the Glossopteris flora of 

 Argentina and other districts. From New Zealand it would 

 appear that no well-authenticated example of the genus 

 Glossopteris has so far been recorded. In China, although 

 Permo-Carboniferous rocks occupy a very considerable 

 stretch of country, and have furnished abundant materials 

 for a detailed monograph on fossil plants by Professor 

 Schenk in Richthofen's China'^ the Glossopteris flora has 

 not been recoo-nised in Palaeozoic strata. The Palaeozoic 

 plants from the coalfields of China agree in the main with 

 the typical Coal Measure forms of the Northern Hemi- 



^ Boulder beds have been described by Derby {Records Ind. Geo, 

 Surv., vol. xxii., pt. ii., p. 69, 1889) in Southern Brazil, and Blanford 

 [Blanford (5)] considers that they are probably of the same age as the 

 plant-bearint( beds of Rio Grande do Sol. 



2 David, p. 300. ^ Schenk. 



