the New South Wales Coal-Fields. 85 



the present year, under my auspices, and by a friend of mine, 

 the particulars of which I have given in p. 27, ' Recent Geolo- 

 gical Discoveries,' &c, has not helped us out of our dilemma. 

 Mr. M'Coy sees in it a total overthrow of my positions, and 

 states that the Wollumbilla fossils " are the marine equivalents 

 of exactly the same age as that he assigns to the plant-beds, i. e. 

 Lower Mesozoic, not older than the base of the Trias, and not 

 younger than the lower part of the great Oolite." 



In these fossils the Professor detected "numerous Lower 

 Oolite, Liassic, and Triassic forms, and among them a distinct 

 species of the Muschelkalk genus Myophoria, &c." Now, if 

 they are " the marine equivalents of exactly the same age " as 

 the Scarborough Oolites, which was Mr. M'Coy's plant-horizon 

 in 1857, how came the Liassic and Triassic, and especially the 

 Muschelkalk species there ? This apparent paradox is adroitly 

 veiled under the word Mesozoic, which word has gradually 

 crept into the discussion, and took precedence in 1860. " Meso- 

 zoic " everywhere supplants " Oolitic " in Professor M'Coy's 

 present essay, and he speaks of his having held the same views 

 respecting the " Mesozoic " plants in contradistinction to the 

 Palaeozoic fauna fourteen years ago, though, ten years after, he 

 maintained the supremacy of the " Yorkshire Oolite." 



It is, notwithstanding this convenient merging of the Scar- 

 borough horizon in Mesozoic indistinctness, perfectly clear that 

 if I have adopted "a new view" (p. 144, note), so has Professor 

 M'Coy; and as he is happy in knowing that I have done so, I 

 am equally happy at finding that he is getting below the Oolite 

 into a region where, perhaps, our views will meet after all. 



Judging from my own examinations, and from the admission 

 of Mr. Selwyn, I do not believe there is at present any evidence 

 on which can be founded a thorough comparison in Victoria 

 with facts patent in New South Wales. 



In chap. xiv. of my ' Researches in the Southern Gold Fields 

 of New South Wales/ I have stated as distinctly as I could the 

 natural divisions in the series comprising the beds above, with, 

 and below the coal-seams of that colony ; and in the ' Quarterly 

 Journal of the Geol. Soc.' vol. xvii. p. 358, &c, I have repeated 

 that arrangement, specifying only the plants determined by 

 M'Coy, Morris, and Dana in each division. 



Now, according to my view, the Victoria Coal-beds belong to 

 the upper and perhaps second division of the New South Wales 

 series. In Gipps Land I know, from my own researches, that 

 there do exist limestone-beds with fossils of Palaeozoic age, pro- 

 bably upper ; and it is in another part of that large region that 

 Mr. M'Coy's Lepidodendron was found ! But under the Victoria 

 Coal-beds no such deposits have been found by the geologists of 



