Coal-beds and Palceozoic Rocks of New South Wales. 207 



between Awaaba and Warrawolong; together with plants and 

 zoological remains from the Wianamatta trough, in geological 

 position higher than those recently examined. These species I 

 trust to be able, at a future opportunity, to submit to inspection 

 so soon as my engagements allow me to re-explore the different 

 districts. 



To Mr. M'Coy I am very greatly indebted for the patience, 

 skill, and carefulness with which he has determined so many 

 species in my collection. He has completely confirmed the con- 

 clusion at which I had long arrived, and which so late as June 

 1847 I expressed, in perfect ignorance of Mr. M'Coy's labours 

 and conclusions, in my evidence before a Select Committee of the 

 Legislative Council of New South Wales, inquiring into the ex- 

 istence and extent of coal in this territory. My words were 

 these, speaking of the beds of the Australian coal-formation : " I 

 do not mean to imply that they are on the exact horizon of the 

 greater part of the carboniferous formation of Europe, for I be- 

 lieve them to be as old as, if not older than, the lowest beds of 

 that formation." (Coal Inquiry, 7, June 3, 1847.) 



Now in this remark I included not only those beds from which 

 all the fossils examined by Mr. M'Coy were derived, but others 

 much lower down in the order of deposits. Mr. M'Coy has ar- 

 rived, however, at a conclusion which it is the express object of 

 this notice to meet. He says : " With such evidence as I have 

 mentioned, I do not think it improbable that a wide geological 

 interval occurred between the consolidation of the fossiliferous beds 

 which underlie the coal and the deposition of the coal-measures 

 themselves-, that there is no real connexion between them, but 

 that they belong to widely different geological systems, the former 

 referable to the base of the carboniferous system, the latter to the 

 oolitic, and neither showing the slightest tendency to a confusion of 

 type." (Annals, xx. p. 311.) 



I have frequently expressed in letters to Professor Sedgwick 

 my belief, that there is no break whatever between these various 

 beds, but that the fossiliferous rocks are interpolated by the coal- 

 beds containing the peculiar plants described ; and Mr. Jukes, 

 who examined with me in 1845 a portion of the Illawarra coast, 

 has expressed the same opinion (Quarterly Journal Geol. Society, 

 vol. iii. p. 244). Count de Strzelecki differs from this opinion; 

 and Mr. Dana of the United States Expedition, with whom I 

 examined the southern coast of Illawarra in 1840, far beyond 

 that seen by Mr. Jukes in 1845, expressed at that time his 

 doubt as to the transition mentioned by the latter gentleman. 

 But Mr. Dana saw in the low cliff at Black Head, in the very 

 midst of the organic remains as described from that locality by 

 Mr. M'Coy, frusta of the identical fossilized wood mentioned by 



