BY J. SHIRLEY, ii.HC. . 43 



bunya, the yeAV, and the giant trees of California, have left 

 numerous remains. 



The flora of New Zealand with its tree-ferns and its coni- 

 fers, which seem to be survivals from old-world types, is said to 

 approach most nearly to the Trias-.Tura flora. 



Cretaceous Period. 



The Lower Cretaceous beds, known in Queensland as the 

 Rolling Downs formation, have as yet yielded no plant fossils. 

 The facts connected with the Upper Cretaceous j eriod have to 

 be stated with some diffidence. Mr. Henry G. Stokes some 

 time prior to 1892 collected from beds of clay, shale and sand- 

 stone, lying between Sherwood and Wolston stations on the 

 Ipswich Railway Line ; on the 17-Mile Rocks road ; and in 

 paddocks lying S.S.E of Sherwood, a number of beautifully 

 preserved plant remains, belonging to the most highly developed 

 forms of vegetable life. The same beds are reported by Mr. 

 Stokes as extending from Corinda to Runcorn on the Southport 

 line. These fossiliferous beds were regarded by Mr. Stokes as 

 belonging to some period of the Tertiary epoch. Mr. Jack, on 

 the other hand, says in his " Geology and Paleontology of 

 Queensland and New Guinea," p. 597, " I have gone over the 

 section carefully, and can see no marked lithological distinction 

 between the strata from which Mr. Stokes obtained his fossils, 

 and many other well known beds which unquestionably form 

 part of the Ipswich Coal Measures." These plant fossils from 

 Mr. Stokes' collection, were sent to Baron von Ettingshausen 

 for determination, and are said by him to include palms, tigs, 

 banksias, cinnamons, oaks, aralias, eucalypts and cassias, &c. 

 The whole facies of this fossil flora agrees exactly with that of 

 Upper Cretaceous floras from Aix-la-Chapelle in Europe, and 

 from the Cretaceous strata of New Jersey, Alabama, Nebraska, 

 and Kansas, etc., in North America. It seems impossible to 

 deny that the beds extending from Oxley to Wolston, and from 

 17-Mile Rocks to Runcorn, belong to the Upper Cretaceous 

 epoch. 



About one-twentieth of the area of this colony, from 

 Windorah to the divide between the Gulf and the Northern 

 Pacific waters, is covered by the Desert Sandstone formation, 

 also a part of the Upper Cretaceaus system. These rocks yield 

 very few fossil plants. A fern — Didymosorus — is the most 

 common form ; and, strange to say, undoubled leaves of Glossop- 

 teris, the typical fern of the coal measures, have been discovered 



