54 INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 



CARBONIFEROUS. 

 (a) New South Wales. 



1821. BucKLAND, Dean, considered the coal formation of the 

 Hunter River analogous to that of England (Geol. Trans., vol. v., 

 p. 480). 



1824. Scott, Archdeacon, referred the strata of the Newcastle 

 coalfield to the coal formation ("Annals Philosophy"). 



1845. Strzelecki (" Physc. Desc, New South Wales") places 

 the Newcastle Coal Series in his Third Epoch, and thvis detaches it 

 from the underlying marine series (p. 123). 



1845. MoRKis, in Strzelecki's Phys. Desc, expressed the opinion 

 that the fossil flora presents a Jurassic facies, whilst the deposits 

 containing the mollusca may probably belong to the Carboniferous 

 (p. 296). 



1848. McCoy determined seventeen fossil plants and eighty- 

 three mollusca. The plant-beds he classed as Oolitic, noting that 

 there was no trace " of any characteristic fossil of the old coal of 

 Europe or America." The fossil shells he referred to a Car- 

 boniferous age (Brit. Assoc. Adv. Sc. for 1847). 



1849. Dana (Geolog. Report Wilkes' Exped.) included as 

 component members of a great Carboniferous series the Sydney 

 sandstone, the coal formation, and the " Sub-Carboniferous" 

 argillaceous sandstone. The coal formation of Illawarra and 

 Hunter River is stated to be probably Permian. 



1850. Jukes ("Physc. Structure," &c.) says these coal-bearing 

 beds are believed by some geologists to be of much later date 

 (Oolitic) than the beds below them. " All the physical characters 

 and relations of the rocks, howeA^er, led me to look upon the whole 

 series as one great continuous formation." 



1850. CxARKE (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. iv., pp. 60-63) 

 announced the occurrence of Palaeozoic genera of plants in the 

 inferior part of the Carboniferous System, and this is reiterated in 

 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xi., p. 408, 1855. 



1853. Stutchbuky confirms Clarke's discovery, and figures a 

 Lepidodench'on in his Report on the Geology of Liverpool Plains 

 (p. 9), and it was later confirmed by J. S. Wilson (Quart. Journ. 

 Geol. Soc, vol. XII., pp. 283-288, 1856), and— 



1865. Keene fid. vol. xxi., p. 139, 1865), who considers the 

 coal measures to be as old as those of Europe. Moreover, the 

 later discovery of Glossopteris and Phyllotheca with fossils of 

 Carboniferous age by Clarke, Daintree, and others, both in New 

 South Wales and Queensland, removed all doubt as to the 



