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 OoHtes, 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 McCoy'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. McCoy's Lepidodendron was found ! But under the Victoria 

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



