148 Chapman, The Palcrozoic Flora. [voT."^XXx'l 



XX XIV. 



bv E. T. Newton, of the English Geological Survey. They are 

 sac-like bodies of a yellow colour, split by compression, and 

 superficially punctate or hirsute. 



The kerosene shale of New South Wales has a very different 

 appearance, the rock in section being more or less carbonaceous 

 and thickly filled with flattened elliptical sacs about 300 mm. 

 in length, named Reinschia australis by Renault and Bertrand, 

 and compared by them to the Hydrodictyacece or Volvocinece. 

 Palaeobotanists are now inclined to regard these bodies as 

 spores. A few j^ears ago I was greatly interested to find a 

 representative of kerosene shale identical with that of the New 

 South ^^'ales variety, in a collection of geological specimens 

 made in the Falkland Islands by Mrs. Allardyce, of the Falkland 

 Islands Government House. Its occurrence in that remote 

 locality proved the extension of these pecuHar deposits, 

 probably formed in a chain of depressions beyond South 

 America. At about the same time Halle recorded a Glossopteris 

 flora from the Falkland Islands, thus setting at rest any doubt 

 as to the adventitious nature of the kerosene shale speci- 

 mens. 



Towards the close of the L'pper Palaeozoic in the Australian 

 regions, several types began to appear which are more character- 

 istic of the succeeding Triassic sediments. Amongst these 

 pioneers of the Mesozoic flora are Brachyphyllum, a slender, 

 branched, coniferous tree or shrub which is found abundantly 

 in Jurassic strata in Yorkshire, India, New Zealand, and 

 Victoria ; Baicni, a digitate type of leaf of the Ginkgo group, 

 both this genus and Ginkgo being better known from Jurassic 

 strata in Australia ; and Cladophlcbis (formerly Aleihoplcris), 

 a fern genus which became so marked a type of filicales in 

 Jurassic times, not only in Australia, but in very widely distant 

 localities, as England, India, Greenland, Eastern North 

 America, China, Japan, Poland, and New Zealand. Phyllotheca, 

 as already noted, occurs sparingly in the Carbo-Permian, though 

 very abundant in the Triassic series. Tccniopleris is also found 

 in the Upper Coal measures of New South Wales, but occurs 

 only as a rare and precocious meml)er of the Mesozoic flora. 



This commingling of floras of two epochs is not confined to 

 the latest period of the PaUeozoic, as we have already seen a 

 similar example in the Devono-Carboniferous flora of Victoria 

 and New South Wales. Thus, as our knowledge of the plants 

 and animals of these supposed breaks in time periods increases, 

 we shall more and more clearly recognize that the arbitrary 

 gaps made by geologists arc of no permanent importance, and 

 are now being slowly but surely bridged. 



