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PROCEEDINGS OE THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



[Mar. 20, 



species. Afterwards another was noticed by the late E. Forbes*, who 

 expressed his doubts whether that fossil was a Lepidodendron at all. 

 The late Mr. Stutchbury mentions two from the coal-formation on 

 the Storton River, in the vicinity of calcareous rocks which have 

 their equivalents on the Hunter River, where the overlying coal- 

 measures contain the Jurassic (?) forms. And he also figures one 

 under the impression that it had not before been figured from 

 Australia t . 



In the course of my explorations in the northern districts of this 

 colony, I found abundance of these Lepidodendra, with other allied 

 genera, in a peculiar shale mentioned by the late Allan Cunningham 

 as occurring on the Peel River %. This rock occurs also not far from 

 Goonoogoonoo ; and from it I have made a considerable collection, of 

 which I now propose to forward specimens for comparison § ; as they 

 resemble in some respects Goppert's Pachyphlceus \\ rather than the 

 usual forms of Lepidodendra, it may be well to ascertain whether 

 they belong to that plant. Similar fossils exist in the neighbourhood 

 of "Wellington Valley, to the west of Bathurst ; and lately I have 

 found that abundance of them occur in the shale forming the surface 

 in places, at Canoona (where a considerable gold-field exists), on the 

 Fitzroy or Lower Mackenzie River in Queensland, nearly half a 

 degree north of the tropic of Capricorn, and a few miles east of the 

 150th meridian. They were considered by the persons who first 

 saw them there as belonging to a " tesselated pavement," and ex- 

 cited great curiosity. In one of the grooves defining the leaf- 

 scars, I detected a minute particle of gold, which had settled in it 

 from the alluvium above. 



M. Odernheimer also mentions similar Lepidodendra in his 

 account of the Peel River district, published in our Proceedings % ; 

 and from my own inquiries I know they occur abundantly along the 

 IVInnilla River, and in that part of the Liverpool Plain country which 

 skirts the western limits of the Peel and Bingera Gold-fields, the 

 latter of which has on that border coal (near "Warialda), and just 

 such grits and sandstones as cover the coal along the coast from the 

 Hunter to the Illawarra ; the usual underlying calcareous beds, 

 abounding in Carboniferous and Devonian zoological forms, also 

 making their appearance, as they do to the west of Newcastle. 



I consider, therefore, that there has been a sufficient verification 

 of some of the genera I reported in 1847**, since they have thus 

 been found in various parts of a region extending from 23° to 37° 

 S. lat., at least one thousand miles of direct distance. 



In the collection which I exhibited at Paris in the year 1855, were 

 included two specimens marked in the catalogue as " Lcpidoden- 



* Lectures on Gold, 2nd edit. p. 53. 



t Report to New South Wales Government July, 1853 ; Parliamentary Blue 

 Book, Dec. 1854, p 18—20. 



t Proceedings Geol. Soc, vol. ii. p. 109. 

 § The specimens have not yet arrived, July 15, 1861. — Edit. 

 || Fossilen Farnkrauter, pi. 43. 

 Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xi. p. 401. 

 ** See also Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. iv. p. 60. 



