ON SOME OLDER TERTIARY FOSSILS OF UNCER-= 
TAIN AGE FROM THE MURRAY DESERT. 
By Proressor RaupH Tarte. 
|Read June 6. 1899. ] 
Puate I. 
A small collection of fossils in an excellent state of preservation, 
though more or less bleached, was submitted to me in 1886 ; of 
the species which were in duplicate I was permitted to retain an 
example. The list of species, then compiled, has since been lost, 
so that now I have only actual knowledge of those retained for 
the University Museum. Some of these species are referred to 
in my Monographs as coming from a deep well on Cooke’s Plains 
or Murray Desert. It is ouly recently, though, after many futile 
attempts, that I have received authentic information of the 
locality whence the fossils were obtained. My irformant, Mr. 
L. Salter, of Angaston, writes me, March 3, 1§99—“ Mr. Smith 
says that the fossils came from the bottom of a deep well at a 
place called Tareena, on the Murray, in New South Wales, just 
across the Victorian border.” 
To add to my perplexity, I recognised in the Museum of Way 
College an identical set of fossils, both in regard to species and 
condition of fossilization. Through the kind services of Dr. Torr, 
these fossils have been traced to their source. Firstly it was 
stated ‘that they were dug up at Nildottie, somewhere near the 
Wow-Wow Plains, about 25 years ago, by his (the pupil’s) grand- 
father. The well was sunk afterwards to a thousand feet in 
depth.” Ina later communication, January 4, 1899, Dr. Torr 
writes—‘‘ The well from which the fossils were taken is at 
Mindarie, about 80 miles south-east of Swan Reach.” And since 
then Dr. Torr has submitted to me a further batch of the same 
sort of fossils. 
The two localities must be at least eighty miles to the eastward 
of the easterly scarp of the Eocene Plateau at Overland Corner. 
There is nothing improbable that the topographic positions are 
