Remarks on Professor McCoy's Commentary. 213 



there to my entire satisfaction, but wished it had not been in 

 a corner. 



Respecting the New South Wales plant which I showed 

 Mr. McCoy, in his room at the Museum, from below the coal 

 seams interpolating beds with mountain limestone fossils, I 

 repudiate his history of what was said at the time, and am 

 astonished at his making out something like an attempt to 

 impose incorrect evidence upon him. 



Nor do I luidcrstand what he means about the sections, 

 I had no drawings of any sections with me, I could 'not, 

 therefore, exhibit any. And, if the sections be taken to 

 mean not a drawing, but an account, of beds in succession, I 

 can only reply that I believe Mr. McCoy has had explained 

 to him long before that there is nowhere in New South Wales 

 an uninterrupted series from the top to the bottom of the 

 carboniferous rocks in any one section, and therefore it was 

 easy to answer any question put in the negative, without in- 

 vohiug any contradiction to Professor McCoy, as I thought 

 it would give him pleasure; and it is a sorry return for my 

 civility, to find them used in this strange manner against me. 



No doubt I -was asked, nay " pressed,'^ as to ivhether I got 

 it myself, and if it could not have fallen in, &c., &c., which I 

 really thought quite unnecessary, and not a dignified way of 

 treating me ; but I gave the only answer I could give con- 

 sistent with truth — that, though a stone could fall to the 

 bottom of a shaft, this specimen could not, for the Newcastle 

 seams do not exist there at all above the upper beds, which 

 are those of Mr. INIcCoy's carboniferous rocks, and I relied 

 on the authority of the gentleman who sent it. As to the 

 upper beds at the shaft, I speak from my own knowledge of 

 the locality, having been there, though Mr. McCoy asserts 

 not. But I have not been down the shaft. Mr. McCoy will 

 recollect a specimen I asked him to name, sent from Sydney. 

 That came from the top beds of the shaft section. As the 

 story stands in the " Commentary,^^ it helps to make up an 

 item against me; but it docs not affect the truth, that, though 

 I did not find the fossil myself in the shaft, I relied upon the 

 testimony 1 had. And now I may explain that the Honorable 

 Bourne llussell, member of the Legislative Council of New 

 South AVales, having opened pits near Stony Creek, in the 

 mountain limestone beds (from which he sent me specimens 

 of the whole series of the beds from top to bottom) IjcIoav all 

 the fossilifcrous beds and coal seams, came upon the bed 

 from which he sent me a large slab, on which the fossil was 



