OCCURRENCE OF LEPIDODENDRON. 333 



determine the exact bed from which it was derived. In 

 company with Mr. Atkins I visited the place where the 

 fossil was found, and spent several hours in carefully going 

 over the ground and examining the I'ocks, but could not find 

 another specimen. I found however several beds of rock 

 very much alike, from one of which I am tolerably confident 

 it was derived, but the exact bed is of little importance, since 

 they are all apjjarently conformable and of similar age. 



What is that age? we may next ask. To answer the 

 question it is necessary to briefly describe the geology of the 

 surrounding country. As we proceed eastward from Bathurst, 

 we pass off the granite on which the city is built at about 

 seven or eight miles from town. The rocks first reached are 

 soft shales, passing into crystalline schists or hornfels in the 

 immediate neighbourhood of the junction with the granite. 

 The schists are much tilted and last for about three miles. 

 Beyond them, still proceeding eastward, we reach a series of 

 beds of quartzite, red and brown grits, in many cases con- 

 taining casts of JBrachiopods, and occasionally corals, with 

 intrusive rocks coming in at intervals and apparently inter- 

 bedded with the grits and quartzites. It is from one of the 

 grit beds that the fossil Lcpidodendron appears to have come. 

 The soft schists are usually classed as Silurian, and on the 

 geological sketch map published by the Mines Department 

 of New South Wales a broad band is coloured as belonging 

 to that system, so that it would include the whole series of 

 grits, &c. as well. I believe, however, that the late Mr. 

 C. S. Wilkinson, F.G.S., whose recent death must be 

 deplored by all Colonial geologists as a distinct loss to the 

 science, classed the gritty beds containing Spirifer disjuncius 

 and Rhi/nchonella pleurodon-dsSihiro-Devomsin, and they are 

 very probably of Devonian Age. The beds themselves never 

 appear to have been carefully studied, and in fact the only 

 example of systematic stratigraphical woi'k in the district 

 with which I am acquainted is that done by Mr. Wilkinson 

 himself, who surveyed the country around Lithgow and 

 Rydal, and compiled a geological map and section which 

 appeared in the Report of the New South Wales Depart- 

 ment of Mines for 1877. The map is an excellent piece of 

 work, and there are a few notes attached to it, but unfor- 

 tunately the author does not seem to have pubHshed any 

 detailed memoir upon it, so that we can only refer to the map 

 itself, the section, and a short account in Mr. Wilkinson's 

 " Notes on the Geology of New South Wales," also 



