518 Notices of Memoirs — The Victorian Tertiaries. 



knowledge of the Tertiary faunas of the world that no one can 

 possibly have at first hand, and enormous collections, quantities of 

 each species, that no museum is likely to contain. As regards 

 phylogeny, we cannot use it till we know the sequence. 



Confining ourselves to the MoUusca, we find Tate recognizing about 

 a dozen recent species in the Barwonian. Later authors have more 

 or less definitely recognized about half a dozen more. As we have 

 over 800 named species in this series of beds, we may double the 

 number of recent ones without seriously affecting the result. 



Assuming that the Barwonian is Eocene, for some age has to be 

 assumed, I have elsewhere discussed most of the genera that 

 transgress.^ Some pass up from Mesozoic times, others are extensions 

 back from younger horizons in the north, or from recent seas. Besides 

 this the absence of many modern genera must be insisted on. It is 

 customary for those who hold that the Barwonian is younger than 

 Eocene to label all the old genera 'survivals'. This hardly settles 

 the question. Leaving the land fauna on one side, there are some 

 undoubted survivals in the Indo-Pacific, but it may be asked, did 

 nothing originate in the southern seas and slowly migrate northwards ? 

 The real place of origin and age of the transgressing genera cannot 

 be settled off-hand by northern standards. 



The Barwonian is divided into Baleombian and Janjukian, but 

 their relationship has been vigorously discussed. By far the greater 

 part of the fauna is common to the two. Passing by the discussions 

 between Professor Ralph Tate and Mr. J. Dennant on the one side, 

 and Dr. G. B. Pritchard and myself on the other, which ended, as 

 such discussions frequently do, in a series of flat contradictions as to 

 facts, we may consider Mr. F. Chapman's position. 



Mr. Chapman asserts that the Batesford limestone is typical 

 Janjukian, and appears to conclude that all the polyzoal limestones — 

 and there are many — are also Janjukian. He argues on the same 

 data that the Janjukian is the younger series. Tate, Dennant, 

 Pritchard, and myself, however much we differed on other points, 

 agreed that the age of the limestones must be decided by reference 

 to the rich fauna of the clays. Mr. Chapman makes no reference 

 to an intercalated clay bed in the Batesford limestone from which 

 Dr. Pritchard and myself collected forty-five species, mainly mollusca. 

 Of these only one is confined to the type Janjukian locality, while 

 twelve have never been found there, but are confined to typical 

 Baleombian beds. The rest are common to both series. The limestone, 

 then, as we asserted, is Baleombian and not Janjukian. Moreover, 

 we showed, by a careful examination of the area, that the limestone 

 passed under clays which are typically Baleombian, and can be traced 

 to Orphanage Hill, only a couple of miles away. M'Coy grouped 

 the Orphanage Hill beds with those of Mornington, that is, with the 

 type Baleombian section. Tate, Dennant, Pritchard, and myself 

 agree with the grouping, and Mr. Chapman still labels the Orphanage 

 Hill fossils Baleombian in the IN'ational Museum. If, as Mr. Chapman 

 asserts, the Batesford limestone is Janjukian, then the Baleombian is 



^ Kep. Aust. Ass. Adv. Science, Hobart, 1902 : Pres. Address, Sect. C. 



