343 
GENERAL OBSERVATIONS REGARDING THE 
CLASSIFICATION OF THE UPPER PALAOZOIC 
AND MESOZOIC ROCKS OF TASMANTA, TOGETHER 
WITH A FULL DESCRIPTION OF ALL THE 
KNOWN TASMANIAN COAL PLANTS, INCLUDING 
A CONSIDERABLE NUMBER OF NEW SPECIES. 
By Rost. M. Jounston, F.L.S., Erc. 
[Read September 9th, 1885. ] 
CaRBONIFEROUS System (Up. Pal.) 
By common consent the name given to this system, in 
Europe especially, applies to a vast series of rocks, well 
represented in every division of the globe, composed 
principally cf alternating beds of sandstone, shale, fireclay, 
ironstone, coal, and limestone. In Europe and America the 
beds of the system pass imsensibly into the underlying 
Devonian, although its principal members are most markedly 
distinguished from the latter by its peculiarly rich and 
characteristic vegetable deposits. It is to this profusion of 
vegetable remains that the system owes its name. Although 
in Europe the upper limits of the Carboniferous system can, 
with some degree of satisfaction, be separated from the 
lower limits of the succeeding system, known as the Permian, 
or Dyas, which according to artificial classification is 
deemed to close the Paleozoic age, it is not as yet always 
possible in other countries, especially in Australasia, to find 
special stratigraphic or organic characters, whereby the 
divisions between the two periods can even be most distantly 
approximated. The two systems for the purposes of this 
paper are therefore grouped as one under the term 
Carboniferous system. 
The difficulties of any attempt to define the equivalents of 
the Carboniferous and Permian systems in Australasia may 
perhaps be unfelt or overlooked to a great extent by many 
Paleontologists, whose observations are often based upon 
collections made in the field by other ha: ds, but it is other- 
wise with the field geologist, who must needs correlate locally 
stratigraphy with paleontology, and therefore cannot so 
easily ignore the evidences of the former when dealing with 
the latter. The field worker, therefore, finds much greater 
difficulty than the Paleontologist, as such, in any attempt to 
break into minor systematic sub-divisions, the various 
formations of any local group which seem to run insensibly 
into each other. Divisions of systems are, at the best, 
artifis.. and imaginary as regards the whole succession of 
