68 THE VICTORIAN XATDUALIST. 



cliffs on which the fortress of Newcastle stands. On the face 

 of the cliff several thin seams of coal are visible, with intervening 

 layers of shale. The main seam is just exposed at low water, 

 and on the beach are boulders of the shale which have fallen 

 from the cliff and been more or less rounded by the action of 

 the waves. 



On splitting these open the prints of several interesting 

 fossil plants of the coal measures are exposed. The number of 

 species is not perhaps great, but the number of individuals 

 is very large, and the pictures of the plant life of this remote 

 age are beautifully preserved. The fossils I saw were, I believe, 

 species of Phylloiheca, Calaviites, Antmlana, Sphenopteris, and 

 Glossopteris. I was fortunate in meeting on my ramble with Mr. 

 Waterhouse, of West Maitland, an accomplished geologist, who 

 kindly showed me where to find the fossils, gave me much 

 interesting information, and afterwards showed me his large 

 and adniirably arranged collection. Though Newcastle is 

 60 miles by sea and 100 by rail from Sydney, it can be very 

 conveniently visited, as a steamer leaves Sydney in the evening 

 and arrives at Newcastle next morning, giving a whole day for 

 geologising, visiting the mines, etc., and the tourist can return 

 next night by steamer or rail. 



In concluding this paper I will mention two or three facts 

 which must strike a A^ictorian botanist in visiting the mother 

 colony. The first is the occurrence of many tropical and 

 Asiatic forms, exemplified in the palm trees, cycads, and fig 

 ' trees, in close juxtaposition with plants of strictly Australian 

 types and of families confined to the temperate zones. Another 

 is one of which I have already given an example — the occur- 

 rence of species belonging to genera mainly represented in 

 South-Western Australia and absent in the southern part of the 

 continent. These facts have, of course, been duly noted by Sir 

 Joseph Hooker in his masterly introductory essay to the flora 

 of Tasmania ; by the late George Bentham ; and by Baron von 

 Mueller in his admirable essay in connection with the 

 Melbourne Exhibition of 1866 ; but it is interesting to be able 

 to verify them in a short visit to a very small part of New South 

 Wales, and in a journey of an hour or two to pass from tropical 

 vegetation to a flora of so entirely different a character as that 

 of Western Australia. Another fact which I have not seen 

 recorded, and which I think is of some interest, and might be 

 worth verifying by more extended observations, is that in the 

 coast flora of New South Wales there is a greater prevalence of 

 the higher forms of the genera common to that colony and to 

 Victoria than with us — that is, of plants with more richly- 

 coloured and deeper corollas, and adapted, therefore, for cross 

 fertilisation by the higher orders of insects. I will give a few 

 examples. Our only coloured epacrids round the shores of 

 Port Phillip are the pink variety of E. impressa (and that is rare), 



