224 0. Feistmaiitel — Fossil Plants from Banirjanj Goal-field:. [Dec. 



view constitutes a single formation, to which besides the w^hole Panchet 

 group is in the closest relation. 



In some preliminary notes on the Indian fossil flora published in a 

 recent number of the Eecords of the Geological Survey of India,* I have 

 attempted to show that all the plant-bearing beds from the Kach-Jabalpur 

 group down to the Talchir group are the representatives of the Eui'opean 

 Jm-a-Triassic systems, merely on palaeontological grounds, such as the best 

 known palaeontologists, from Brongniart, Sternberg, Lindley, and Hutton, 

 down to those of the present day, have established them ; and these observa- 

 tions on the Indian flora are ali-eady ^^artly approved at home. 



From the occiu'reuce of the genus Glossopteris (which is so very fre- 

 quent here in India in the Damudas and in the upper portion of the Aus- 

 tralian coal-measures, but which occurs also rarely in the lower coal-measures 

 of the same country), our Damudas were for some time compared with these 

 Australian lower coal-measures, which contain scarcely anything but the 

 remains of animals of lower carboniferous age ; and the two were therefore 

 considered to be of the same age. But while our Damuda Series contams 

 in no part the least trace of a marine animal, or even of a Fauna, which 

 permits of any comparison with the Australian coal-strata, it contains on the 

 other hand a very numerous Flora which has all its connections in Europe, 

 and this in the mezozoic strata in general and in the Trias in particular. 



The same age must be assigned also to the upper Australian coal- 

 measures (Wianamatta, Hawkesberry, Victoria, Queensland, Tasmania, &c., 

 Upper Newcastle Coal-beds), and with these only can om* Damuda flora be 

 compared. Glossopteris makes its appearance as a genus rarely in Australia 

 at a time when carboniferous animals lived in the sea, but it sui-vived and 

 became more abundant after these carboniferous strata had been deposited, 

 i. e., when the carboniferous animals were extinct, i. c, when another period 

 of life had begun. 



I have shown these relations in the last number of the Eecords (IX. 4). 



Mr. Wood-Mason's fossils exhibit again throughout the most iimnis- 

 takeable characteristics of a mesozoic flora. 



a. Ferns with net-venation, of which Sagenopteris and Glossopteris 

 are examples. 



h. Ferns Avith parallel venation, passing out from the midrib at right 

 or slightly acute angles, and forked — Taeniopteris (and I am sm-e the 

 present paper will not fail to make the mesozoic and triassic age of the 

 Damudas still more evident, as in the whole flora there is not a single form 

 which could justify a view of an age lower than Triassic ; this of coui'se 

 can be only stated as regards the homotaxis.) I cannot here discuss all 

 the previous literatm-e of the subject. This will be done in detail in my 



* Vol. IX, 2, 3. 



