﻿Revieics — Prof, de Koninck's Fossils of New South Wales. 171 



high and continuous to maintain the waters of an immense lake at 

 such an elevation as 1700ft. above the modern sea-level, or whether 

 the presence of such an enormous body of ice would not be likely 

 to freeze up the rivers altogether, Mr. Belt does not tell us. 



B. B. W, 



IL — Professor L. G. de Koninck on the Paleozoic Fossils of 

 New South Wales, £" Eecherches sur les Fossiles Paleo- 



ZOiQUES de la NoUVELLE-GaLLES DU Sdd (ArSTKALIE)."] Ke- 



printed from the Memoires de la Societe Boy ale des Sciences de 

 Liege, 2^'^« serie, t. vi. (1876), 140 pp. 8vo. and 4 quarto plates. 



IN this important Memoir Professor de Koninck describes all the 

 Silurian and Devonian species which have been collected by 

 the Eev. W. B. Clarke, F.R.S., in New South Wales during thirty 

 years of scientific labours in the colony. The following paragraph 

 of the Introduction hints somewhat obscurely at the reasons which 

 induced Mr. Clarke to send his fossils so far to be named, and perhaps 

 demands fuller explanation. Prof, de Koninck says : 



" Mr. Clarke, in communicating to me the Palaeozoic fossils 

 gathered by his care in New South Wales, wished to check his own 

 observations and to confirm their accuracy in a manner which he 

 has not dreaded to seek five thousand leagues from the country 

 explored by him, when, with inconceivable want of judgment [aher- 

 ration d'espriQ, certain geologists disdained to make use of them, 

 although ready at hand, in arriving more surely and quickly at the 

 methodical classification of the formations the study of which was 

 confided to them." (p. 6.) 



Whatever may be alluded to in these words, it is clear that no one 

 could have set about the work of determining the species represented 

 in Mr. Clarke's collection with more zeal or learning than the great 

 Belgian paleontologist. 



Fifty-nine Silurian species are enumerated and described. Of 

 these, twenty-seven are referred to the Ludlow horizon, and the 

 remaining thirty-two to the Upper Llandovery, the greater number 

 of the former consisting of Corals and Crustacea, and the latter almost 

 exclusively of Mollusca and Crustacea. No Graptolites are recorded 

 from New South Wales, although they are common in Victoria 

 (=Bala Beds, according to Prof. McCoy and Mr. Etheridge, jun.). 



Thirteen species are described as new, but here, as in the case of 

 most of the thirty new Devonian forms described, they all belong to 

 European or American genera, of which closely-allied species are 

 known. 



The Upper Silurian Fauna here described therefore is strictly 

 analogous to those of Europe and America, and is not even sensibly 

 distinguished from them by such minor characters as size or other 

 individual peculiarities of local value. Moreover, the beds which 

 contain the Upper Llandovery fossils are chiefly argillaceous, whilst 

 the overlying Ludlovian forms occur in hard reddish quartzites and 

 in white or greyish limestone. 



The Devonian species described are eighty-one in number, of 



