106 Commentary on 



found in the beds in dispute^ nor mixed with the plants to 

 which I have assigned a mesozoic age^ as any reader of Mr. 

 Clarke's paper would be in danger of taking for granted. 

 As to the specimen he alludes to in the Melbourne Museum, 

 the Government Geologist can testify that, on first seeing it, 

 some years ago, in a store in Melbourne, I at once charac- 

 terised it to him as the most important palseontological 

 specimen ever found in the colony, as it proved the existence 

 of the true palaeozoic coal formation in Gipps Land ; and, I 

 fiu'ther told him, it was of the same species as a fragment 

 sent many years ago from the Moreton Bay district by Mr, 

 Clarke, and the specimen was distinctly pointed out to Mr. 

 Clarke, when he visited the Museum, as one likely to interest 

 him. 



In his next paragraph Mr. Clarke says, " He was slow in 

 '' admitting what I stated to him in February last, that now 

 " we have found in New South Wales coal seams in the very 

 " heart of his mountain limestone fossils, and that plants known 

 " in the Newcastle beds, which he calls oolitic, were found at 

 '' the very bottom of the whole series of these newly opened 

 '' beds, containing the M. L. fossils." The facts of the case 

 are these, and can be vouched by the Government Geolo- 

 gist.* Mr. Selwyn brought me, at the date mentioned, 

 a fragment of shale with the Newcastle species of 

 plants, which he said Mr. Clarke had brought from 

 the bottom of a coal-pit, the sides of which gave a clear 

 section, showing the marine carboniferous fossils at a certain 

 distance from the surface less than the depth from which 

 the plants came, so that he supposed the matter in dispute 

 was finally decided. I asked him if Mr. Clarke had himself 

 got the specimen, and could himself vouch for the existence 

 of a bed containing such plants below the bed of marine 

 zoological fossils. Mr. Selwyn had no doubt that the 

 words and sketches of Mr. Clarke clearly and un- 

 mistakeably conveyed the impression that he had. 

 To Mr. Selwyn' s astonishment, however, it turned 

 out, on my pressing Mr. Clarke, who then joined us, 

 that he had never been at the spot ; that the bit of stone had 

 been brought up by one of the workpeople from the bottom 

 of the pit, sunk through the coal beds, intercalated with shales 

 containing the Newcastle species of plants into the under- 

 lying marine beds ; that there was no evidence whatever of a 



*Mr. Selwyn, the Government Geologist, was present when the above 

 paper was read, and confinned the references made to him. 



