320 PROCEEDINGS OP THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETT. [April 24, 



difficulty in imagining them to be either younger or older than those 

 deposits." MM. de Yerneuil and Barrande also especially notice 

 the agreement of certain forms with those of Australia. 



F. T. Gregory, Esq., in 1861*, gave to the Society a geological 

 sketch of a part of Australia, the result of nearly thirty years' resi- 

 dence in Western Australia. 



The area geologically explored was the Darling range and the 

 country to the eastward. Mr. Gregory states that he had been 

 unable to procure any positive proof of the existence of rocks of 

 Silurian age — though, judging by analogy, there is reason to suppose 

 they might occur ; he states that the rocks comprising " Mount 

 Barren Eanges" are the only ones bearing any Silurian character 

 or holding that relative position with regard to other formations. 

 He next assumed that the Devonian series occurred in the form of 

 compact felspathic clays, sandstones, and ferruginous conglome- 

 merates, capping the tableland of the Darling range ; he, however, 

 failed to detect any fossils in these supposed Devonian beds. (These 

 are the Desert Sandstones.) 



Some doubt seems to have existed relative to the Carboniferous 

 group, to what horizons to refer the coal-bearing strata of the 

 Irwin river, though probably these coals are of Mesozoic age ; and 

 Gregory stated that on the Fitzgerald river " a true seam of coal 

 had not been found," the known bed being horizontal and resting 

 unconformably upon the edges of highly elevated Carboniferous 

 Shales, and containing distinct fragments of wood and infusible resin. 

 In a note by the Editor of the Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. the following 

 genera are said to occur in the collection brought from Western 

 Australia by Mr. Gregory, and which determined these lower beds 

 to be Upper Palaeozoic : — Spirifera, Productus, Pleurotomaria , Nau- 

 tilus, Cyatliophyllum, Encrinital stems, being Carboniferous fossils, 

 with coal, from Irwin Eiver. 



In 1861 the Rev. W. B. Clarke f also briefly traced the researches 

 which brought to light the position of certain plants in the coal- 

 bearing beds of Australia, stating that Mr. Selwyn (Director of 

 the Geological Survey of Victoria) had recognized in Eastern 

 Yictoria " true Carboniferous plants," and that the same author 

 had stated that the fossils of the Tasmanian coal-bearing beds are 

 nearly all Carboniferous or Devonian forms. So with New South 

 Wales, in which colony Mr. Clarke states that the plants said to 

 be " Jurassic " occur associated with a Palaeozoic fish, Urosthenes 

 australis, Ag. 



In the new colony of Queensland, associated with " calcareous 

 beds holding abundance of Carboniferous and Devonian zoological 

 forms, occur shales and fine calcareous grits charged with plants." 



Mention is made by Mr. Clarke of some sinkings at Stony Creek, 

 Maitland, by Mr. B. Eussell, in which were found Pacliydomi, 

 Spiriferce, Orthoceratidce, Conularice, Asteriadce, &c., thus demon- 

 strating in that area the presence of Palaeozoic rocks and associated 

 genera of fossils. 



» Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xvii. p. 475, 1861. t Ibid. p. 354. 



