62 C. T. Trechmann — Age of the 



Serpulites (?) sp. (PI. V, Fig. Ua, b.) 



A fragment, 5 mm. long, of a tubular organism, now siliceous, but 

 probably originally calcareous. It is almost circular in section at 

 one end, where it measures 5 mm. in diameter, but slightly oval at 

 the other. Its outer surface seems to be rather rough. This 

 organism suggests the tubular structures called Torlessia McKayi, 

 Bather, 1 which occur in the Mt. Torlesse Annelid beds, and which 

 most New Zealand geologists consider the highest member of the 

 Maitai Series. 



It also suggests Serpulites Warthi,- Waagen, which is said to be 



very common fossil in the Lower Speckled Sandstone and the 

 glacial Boulder Beds of the Salt Range, the fauna of which is 

 equivalent to that of the marine Penno-Carboniferous of Australia 

 and the Maitai fauna of New Zealand. 



Locality. — Maitai Limestone, junction of Wairoa and Boding 

 Bivers, Wairoa Gorge. 



All the ten genera and species I have described, with the exception 

 of the comparatively unimportant Serpulites, occur in the marine 

 Permo-Carboniferous of New South Wales. 



The evidence, therefore, of the fossils of the Maitai rocks, few as 

 they are, is overwhelmingly in favour of a correlation of these beds 

 with the marine Permo-Carboniferous of New South Wales and 

 Tasmania. 



The absence of certain familiar fossils of Australia and the Salt 

 Bange, such as Eury&e&ma, Conularia, Aviculopecten, etc., may be 

 noticed, but their absence may be explained on geographical or 

 bathymetrical grounds. The Boulder Bed of the Salt Range is 

 equally wanting in some forms, but Waageu does not hesitate to 

 correlate its fauna with that of the Permo-Carboniferous of Australia. 



The Relation of New Zealand to Gondwanaland. 



The attribution of the fossils of the Maitai Series to a Permo- 

 Carboniferous age, equivalent to the marine bands in the Permo- 

 Carboniferous of New South Wales and Tasmania, raises the question 

 both of the presence or absence of a Glossopteris flora, and of the 

 relations of the New Zealand area to Gondwanaland. 



Mr. E. A. N. Arber 3 has shown that the flora of the Mt. Potts 

 Beds of the Canterbury Alps, which Hector supposed to contain 

 Glossopteris, is really of late Trias or Rhaetic age, and the supposed 

 Glossopteris is a new genus which he calls Linguifolium, allied to 

 certain plants in the Rhaetic of Chili. This result agrees on the 



3 " The Mount Torlesse Annelid " : Geol. Mag., Dec. V, Vol. II, pp. 532-41, 

 1905. 



2 "Salt Range Fossils" : Geological results: Pal. Ind., ser. XIII, vol. iv, 

 pt. ii, p. 135, pi. iii, figs. 5, 6a, b, 1891. 



3 "Preliminary Note on the Fossil Plants of the Mount Potts Beds, New 

 Zealand" : Proc. Roy. Soc, B, vol. lxxxvi, pp. 344-7, 1913. Mr. Arber remarked 

 to me in a letter that even if Glossopteris should be found at Mt. Potts, 

 which is extremely improbable, it would not mean that the beds are Permo- 

 Carboniferous, since Glossopteris occurs in Rhaetic beds in Tonkin and China. 

 The Mt. Potts flora is a Mesozoic one " beyond redemption ". 



