RELATIONSHIPS OF THE AUSTRALIAN CAINOZOIC SYSTEM. 
relationship. At the same time he admitted that many of the species 
were almost identical with those of the Miocene of Malta. Duncan 
was inclined to group the Australian tertiaries in one series as 
Jainozoic, referring the deposits below the Mt. Gambier beds to the 
Lower Cainozoic, and all above it to the Upper Cainozoic.* 
By the researches of Prof. Ralph Tate, Sir F. McCoy, and others, 
who have so ably followed in descriptive work, a large number of 
Tertiary species, particularly in the group of the mollusca, have been 
carefully diagnosed and figured; although in some cases perhaps 
scarcely enough attention has been paid to the work of authors 
who have dealt with fossils from related strata in areas not very 
far removed, as those of New Zealand. A critical examination of 
our Victorian lists will in all probability show that in more than one 
instance the same fossil is credited with two names. On the other 
hand, this comparative work has been often retarded by insufficient 
descriptions and inadequate illustrations. 
A modification of McCoy’s earlier opinion of the age of the 
Victorian strata was published in the First Progress Report of the 
Geological Survey of Victoria in 1874 (pp. 35, 36), in which there 
occurs a list of fossils by that author, correctly placing the Mornington 
beds at the base of the series, and referring to them as Oligocene. 
In this list, however, there is an admixture of fossils which are now 
referred to two different horizons in Victoria.+ 
In the correlation of the southern Australian Tertiaries by Prof. 
Ralph Tate and Mr. J. Dennant, in 1893,{ the clays and polyzoal 
limestones of the Balcombian and Janjukian Series (giving them 
the local terms applied by Drs. Hall and Pritchard, wide seq.) are 
there referred to the Eocene. The Cainozoic strata of the Gippsland 
Lakes and the upper bed at Muddy Creek (= Kalimnan) are there 
called Miocene. The older and newer mammaliferous drifts are 
regarded as Pliocene to Pleistocene. 
In 1895 Dr. P. H. MacGillivray, fresh from the study of our 
Cainozoic polyzoa, makes the following statement :—‘‘ The age of 
‘the deposits has been the subject of a good deal of discussion among 
geologists. They are now generally referred to the Oligocene or 
early Miocene, but some are considered by different authorities to 
belong to the Eocene. It is difficult, however, to believe that any 
of them can be so old as the Eocene, at least considering it to be 
comparable to that of Europe. So far as an opinion can be formed 
from an examination of the Polyzoa, they are not of very different 
ages. ’’§ 
Drs. T. S. Hall and G. B. Pritchard, who have worked very 
assiduously in the study of our Cainozoic faunas and stratigraphy, 
* Q.J.G.S., vol. xxvi., 1870, p. 315. 
+ Balanophyllia campanulata, Trigonia acuticostata, Spondylus gaederopoides, Volutilithes 
anticingulatus, Voluta macroptera and Cypraea platyrhyncha are found in beds of later age. 
Trans. R. Soc. S. Australia, vol. xvii., pt. I., 1893, p. 216. 
§ Trans. R. Soc. Vict., vol. iv., 1895, p. 2. 
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