212 Remarks on Professor McCoy's Commentary. 



impossibility. I was with Mr. Dana when he procured some 

 of them, and therefore know the facts. 



Again, there is another mistake in what Mr. McCoy calls 

 the most disagreeable 2^ttrt of his task, and he quite mistakes 

 in that all I contend for. 



Mr. INlcCoy decried at first any coal beds but those of 

 oolitic age. (See his OAvn quotation in the Commentary.) I . 

 forwarded a fossil to England by the late Admiral King, 

 Avhich, he says, is a species of Lepidodendron, to prove that 

 there Avas a coal formation not oolitic ; there was no intention 

 whatever of alluding to any individual beds, such as Mr. 

 McCoy now imagines ; for my view was all along, that the 

 divisions (which are now defined in my book) were parts of 

 one formation, and therefore I considered the fossil in ques- 

 tion good evidence. Singular, however, to say. Professor 

 Edward Forbes says that, in all probability it was not a Lepi- 

 dodendron (Lectures on Gold, page 53). The specimen was 

 not given to me " by an unscientific friend/' nor did it come 

 "from a geologically unknown locality in Queensland ;" it was 

 brought down by the late Dr. Leichhardt, who was an admir- 

 able botanist, and an excellent geologist, and the locality was 

 on the Manilla Eiver, in New South Wales, where that fossil 

 abounds. As to what Mr. McCoy says about tardiness of 

 admission as to the locality whence the Lepidodendron sent 

 to England came, he has an advantage over me. I have no 

 recollection of any such tardiness beyond that which was 

 necessary in answering a correspondence between New South 

 Wales and England — in those days an affair of many months. 

 If Mr. McCoy wrote to me, I doubt not that I replied to his 

 letter. But I remember sending home a cast of another 

 Lepidodendron, which Mr. Templer found at Pine Ridge, 

 Wellington Valley, respecting which I never got any infor- 

 mation, nor reply to my letter, nor do I know Avhat became 

 of either. To the best of my recollection, I never received 

 from Mr. McCoy, whilst he was in England, more than two 

 short letters in my life. 



" The vague baseless siqjposition," mentioned next, is, I am 

 happy to say, that of Mr. Morris, and, in adopting that sup- 

 position, I am willing to suffer the reproof which I share in 

 such good company. 



As to the specimen of Lepidodendron from Gipps Land, 

 in the Melbourne Museum, it Avas not " pointed out to me.^^ 

 I visited the Museum for the first time alone, and saw it 



