xl President's Address 



Both these papers drew forth, at the writer's request, 

 valuable reports from Professor M'Coy, who showed the 

 fossils in question to be of Jurassic age, aud the precise 

 marine equivalents of the flora found both here and in New 

 South Wales, in connection with the carboniferous forma- 

 tion, which flora you will remember he always referred to 

 that epoch, though Mr. Clarke claimed for it far higher 

 antiquity. 



I entered so fully into this interesting and important con- 

 troversy in my last address, that I would not now recur to 

 the subject, were I not in a degree bound to do so by the 

 reference which my reverend friend has done me the honour 

 to make to the opinions I then expressed in the able essay he 

 has since published, " On Recent Geological Discoveries in 

 Australasia," a work destined to form an invaluable fruit and 

 lasting memento of these discussions. No less an authority, 

 moreover, than the Director-General of the Geological 

 Survey of Great Britain has since adverted to the question 

 on so important an occasion as the opening of the Geological 

 Section of the British Association at Manchester, last 

 September. Sir Roderick Murchison suggested, indeed, the 

 possibility of both sides being right in regard, that is to say, 

 to the particular formation each had in view, it seeming 

 probable that in so vast a region as Australia, coal-fields both 

 of pakeozoic and mezosoic age might be found. 



But such, assuredly, was not the issue this Society met to 

 consider when Mr. Clarke's sections from Stony Creek were 

 exhibited before it ; his proposition being neither more nor 

 less than that the plant-beds containing glossoptetris, phy- 

 lotheca, &c, were at that particular spot inferior to or older 

 than the zoological beds containing productse, spiriferae, and 

 other well-known palaeozoic forms. Such a paradox as this 

 we could not receive, unless it were clearly proved that the 

 apparent super-position could be accounted for in no other 



