OP CENTRAL INDIA AND BENGAL. 321 



Mesozoic division of stratified rocks. At the same time the prevalence 

 of the cycadeous type and more especially of the Plerophylla seems to 

 indicate an upper Mesozoic age. If a closer examination be made, it will be 

 found that, so far as the plants from special groups of European rocks 

 have been published, this flora of the Rajmahal group offers numerous 

 points of resemblance and analogy with the flora of the Wealden group 

 of North Europe* — while at the same time there are very strong analo- 

 gies and resemblances to several of the plants known to be peculiar 

 to the Permian group of Saxony and Bavaria.f 



There has been much stress laid, and most justly laid, by Mr. Hislop 

 on the marked analogies which some of his Nagpur fossils offered with 

 those which have been described from the Richmond coal field in Vir- 

 ginia, which had been referred to the age of the lower oolite of Europe. 

 But a more recent and more detailed examination of the fossil plants 

 from that district by Dr. Heer, Zurich, has shewn that they agree gene- 

 rally, and many of them specifically with those of the Upper division 

 of the European trias, the Keuper. This evidence would seem to be con- 

 firmed by the occurrence of fish of the genus JEchmodus, (Egerton) to 

 which genus also belong those fish remains, with unicuspid teeth, which 

 had been originally described as belonging to the genus Dapedius. The 

 evidence derived from a comparison of the Virginian coal strata 

 would therefore go to prove that these beds belonged to the triassic era. 



Emmons | has recently described in some detail the fossils found 

 in the well known Chatham coal field in North Carolina, which is, I think, 

 unquestionably of the same age as the Richmond coal field in Virginia. 

 And among his fossil plants are many almost undistinguishable from some 

 that occur in our Rajmahal beds, while the general facies is remarkably 

 similar. This again affords cumulative evidence that these Rajmahal 



* Dunker, Monographie der Norddeutschen Wealdenbildung, 1846, 



f Geinitz und Gubtier des Permischen systemes in Sachsen 1848, 



% Emmons. American Geology Part VI. 1857. 



2 E 



