AUSTRALASIA, NEW GUINEA, AND NEW ZEALAND 757 



E.), not nearly so far west, nevertheless, as the Ordovician sea had 

 transgressed. This sea was shallow in places and full of islands. 

 As in the Cambro-Ordovician period, sandy sediments and con- 

 glomerates also were deposited in the west, while great areas of 

 coralline limestone were deposited in the eastern portions. Much 

 of the area colored on the geological map as Devonian in the west 

 of New South Wales may be found hereafter to be Silurian or 

 Cambro-Ordovician in age. No fossils have been found in these 

 beds, and they have been referred to the Devonian because of their 

 lithological resemblance to the eastern Devonian quartzites and 

 sandstones. The strikes of the sediments are similar to those of 

 the Ordovician. 



Devonian. — A strong movement of folding closed the Silurian 

 and ushered in the Devonian sedimentation. The Devonian prob- 

 lem in Australia is complicated much in the same way as are the 

 Carboniferous, the Permo-Carboniferous, the Trias-Jura, and the 

 Tertiary. The work of the pioneer geologists suggested that there 

 were two, if not three, divisions in the Devonian period, with an 

 unconformity between two of the sets of sediment. 



Mr. W. S. Dun has made a study of the Devonian in Australia 

 and he has supplied the following notes for this report. He states 

 that the Buchan and Bindi sediments in Victoria appear to be of 

 Middle Devonian age, and that they are the equivalents, in great 

 measure, of the Murrumbidgee beds in Southern New South Wales, 

 the two groups containing types of fossils in common. In this case, 

 however, Mr. Dun points out that it is probable that after 

 detailed examination, Lower Devonian sediments would be found 

 developed in these regions passing into Middle Devonian. 



The Upper Devonian series of sediments are characterized by 

 the forms Lepidodendron australe, Spirifer disjuncta, and Rhyn- 

 chonella pleurodon. The Upper Devonian series occur both at 

 Mount Lambie and at Tamworth (New England). In the latter 

 locality, however, Spirifer disjuncta and Rhynchonella pleurodon do 

 not appear to have been found. 



Sussmilch, 1 in dealing with the Devonian, says : " An alternative 

 explanation of the relations between the Lower and Upper Devonian 



1 C. A. Sussmilch, Geology of New South Wales, 1914, pp. 77-80. 



