the New South Wales Coal-Fields. 83 



equivalents of those in the cliffs near Scarborough. In Mr. 

 M'Coy's note he rejects this list, because a section of the 

 neighbourhood for twelve miles or more had been exhibited to 

 show the position of the Coal-beds, and this was not drawn on 

 equal scales, and because a fault occurs at Bed No. 5, as any one 

 could see from the fact of the dip mentioned at the head of the 

 list. But this fault, which cuts through all the beds alike, could 

 not put younger beds under older. 



Mr. M'Coy thinks I have relied solely on this section ; but 

 there are many other localities in New South Wales which speak 

 as mysteriously as Stony Creek, though no particular notice of 

 them has been as yet taken in discussions. There does not ap- 

 pear to me anything more anomalous in finding an intercalation 

 or a colony of so-called Jurassic plants in so-called Lower Car- 

 boniferous beds, than in finding the Carboniferous fauna amidst 

 the Belemnite-beds of Savoie. But I am quite ready to give up 

 Stony Creek on sufficient proof that its evidence is not trust- 

 worthy. 



A kind of charge against my honesty is alleged in the note 

 at p. 143. This demands an explanation. In 1849 I requested 

 the late Admiral P. P. King to take with him to England some 

 additional New South Wales fossils. Among them was a sup- 

 posed Lepidodendron, found by my late friend Leichhardt about 

 seventy-five miles from the coal-beds of Mount Wingan, and 

 only a short distance from another locality where the supposed 

 Jurassic fauna exists. Mr. M'Coy rejected this, not solely be- 

 cause it did not come from the Glossopteris-heds, but (though 

 he says nothing about it in his paper) because, as I did not find 

 it myself, it was not admissible in evidence, and because it was 

 probably a European specimen, being like L. tetragonum of the 

 English coal-fields ! It is clear, therefore, that, in 1849, Prof. 

 M'Coy did not believe in the existence of any Upper Palaeozoic 

 plants in New South Wales. 



Since that time, Mr. Stutchbury and myself collected such 

 Lepidodendra abundantly, as may be seen by reference to our 

 Geological Reports. One was figured by Mr. Stutchbury in 

 1853. In 1835, Sir T. L. Mitchell discovered one. In 1852 

 I found, in the same beds at Goonoogoonoo with the Lepidoden- 

 dron, a Knorria and a Syringodendron, which Mr.M'Coy himself 

 saw and recognized at Melbourne in 1860; and in 1855 I ex- 

 hibited at Paris a Sigillaria, not formed from " misconceptions of 

 portions of ordinary Mesozoic forms," as is hinted in the note at 

 p. 143, but acknowledged to be genuine articles of the New 

 South Wales flora, though certainly the late Professor E. Forbes 

 doubted the Leichhardt specimen to be a Lepidodendron* ; and 

 * Lectures on Gold, Lect. 2. p. 53. 



7* 



