34 Geological Relations of the 



wood, and of some concretions of a peculiar kind, such as I 

 had not seen in any part of the colonies traversed by myself.* 

 After the publication of Sir T. Mitchell's report, I found that 

 he had placed on one of his charts the word " Belemnite" 

 and as all his collections had been placed in the British 

 Museum, I wrote to the Very Rev. Dr. Buckland to ask him 

 to ascertain for me whether such a fossil had been sent from 

 Australia. The silence of my friend was accounted for by 

 his subsequent illness and death. I then renewed my 

 request to Professor Owen, but to this hour I have not 

 heard a syllable on the subject of the fossil in question, the 

 geological age of which I was anxious to determine, and 

 which I thought might have been an Orthoceratite. All the 

 further light that I had been able to procure, respecting the 

 formations between Darling Downs and the rivers diverging 

 on the parallel of 25° S. and the country up to 24° S., centred 

 on the conviction that a very extensive carboniferous forma- 

 tion existed in that region, aud that in certain localities 

 equivalents of the Newcastle coal beds existed, whilst the 

 higher points of the formation were much more allied to 

 what I have denominated the Wianamatta and Hawkesbury 

 rocks.-j- There were also, it appeared to me, certain differ- 

 ences for which, in absence of reliable knowledge, I could 

 not account. I was in great doubt, in consequence, whether, 

 besides rocks of Permian age, the existence of which I 

 believed to be probable from some fossils I had received from 

 the country between the river Claude and the " Newcastle " 

 coal-beds of the Mackenzie, and which is geologically, as I 

 believed, above the latter, there might not be other beds of 

 still more recent age. The investigations 1 had myself made 

 along the Condamine proved to me that the coal of that 

 region was higher in level than the Moreton Bay coal, or the 

 coal seams of the Hunter River -and Illawarra, and I also 

 concluded that it belonged to a geologically higher portion 

 of the series, inasmuch as, though bearing strong resemblance 

 to some portion of the carboniferous series on the eastern side 

 of the Cordillera, and containing fossils known therein, it did 

 not exhibit those peculiar genera of plants which distinguish 

 the beds of Newcastle and Illawarra, although some of the 

 plants appeared to be identical. Thus, I did not find Gloss- 



* See Kennedy's Diary, with notes by myself, Journal of the Royal 

 Geographical Society, vol xxii. 



f See Southern Gold-fields, pp. 247-249. 



