lii. 



Bijliistra, 2 sp. ; Lrpmlia, 6 sp. ; Ccllepora, 2 sp. ; Eschara, 2 

 sp. ; Hemeschara, 1 sp. ; Vi?wularia, 1 sp. ; ConeschareUina, 2 

 sp. ; Selenaria, 1 sp. ; Sphceropora, 1 sp. ; and JSLyriozoum, 1 sp. 



An interesting addition to Australian fossil botany is the 

 extinct conifer Araucaria Johnstoni, recently made known to 

 science by the technical description by Baron P. von Mueller, 

 K.C.M.Gr., appended to the reports of the Victorian Mining 

 Surveyors for the quarter ending September 30, 3879. The 

 species is founded on impressions of branchlets and the summit 

 of a fruit cone, which were discovered very recently imbedded 

 in the yellow Tertiary freshwater limestone near Hobart Town, 

 Tasmania, by the assiduous and circumspect naturalist Mr. Pv. 

 M. Johnston, F.L.S., of Launceston. The locality where this 

 fossil Araucaria was found is to us of classical interest. It was 

 visited by Charles Darwin, then naturalist to ELM. ship 

 Beagle, during the stay of his ship at Hobart Town, and is 

 alluded to by that illustrious scientist in his "Journal of a 

 Naturalist," p. 448, and also in his work on volcanic islands. 

 It was later examined by Count de Strzelecki, and several of 

 its fossils, leaves, and land shells are figured in that traveller's 

 work, " Physical Description of New South "Wales and Van 

 Diemen's Land, 1845." Mr. Johnston considers these organic 

 relics, notwithstanding the close affinity of some of them to 

 forms of the present vegetation, as belonging to the Miocene 

 period, a view also taken by Professor McCoy, and to some 

 extent supported by the father of Australian geology, the late 

 Pvev. "W. B. Clarke. The phytiferous limestones of Hobart 

 Town are in places covered with a mass of felspathic basalt, 

 and must therefore be of earlier date than the volcanic effusion 

 which Professor Ulrich considers as co-eval with that of 

 Victoria, designated as the older volcanic formation. In various 

 parts of Victoria this basaltic cover conceals the so-called 

 older gold drifts, which contain a now extinct sylvan vegetation 

 made known to us by Baron P. von Mueller's numerous 

 " Observations on New Vegetable Fossils of the Auriferous 

 Drifts." Mr. Johnston has found in association with the new 

 conifer congeneric and even conspecific types of plants from 

 the Victorian gold drifts, thus leaving little room for doubt as 

 to the contemporaneity of the two widely separated plant- 

 bearing deposits. One point of interest attached to the 

 discovery of Araucaria Johnstoni is that of the geological distri- 

 bution of the genus. The earliest traces of distinctly coniferous 

 wood known, those from the carboniferous system, belong to 

 the Araucarian type ; but the actual genus Araucaria does not 

 go farther back than the Trias. It nourished in Jurassic times 

 in Europe and India, but is not definitely known at present in 

 Cretaceous rocks, and it has generally been held that Araucarias 



