﻿1861.] 



CEABKE COAL-FORMATION OP AUSTRALIA. 



357 



dron" and one " Sigillaria*," and mention is made of the probable 

 age of them in the introduction to the catalogue of my collection f. 



It cannot, then, be said that publicity has not been given to at 

 least some of the genera I reported ; and if in any of the others I 

 may have erred from want of means of comparison in this country, 

 yet there is no doubt that plants apparently older than those called 

 "Jurassic" occur in Australia under circumstances no way distin- 

 guished from those which mark the reputed younger forms, in rela- 

 tion to the overlying sandstones and underlying calcareous beds 

 containing true " Carboniferous" animal remains. 



When Mr. McCoy wrote his valuable account of my fossils at 

 Cambridge, he concluded from what he saw that there must be two 

 periods of wide interval — the plants marking an Oolitic and the 

 a n imals a Lower Carboniferous epoch, equivalent to that of Ireland, 

 and without any confusion of type J. But discovering plants of the 

 genera I reported occurring under the circumstances described above, 

 and not comprehending how this could be without assuming the 

 whole series in which coal occurs to be one consecutively, he expressed 

 the desire that geologists would withhold their judgment till the whole 

 evidence had been adduced. To assist in this inquiry into the true 

 age of our Australian coal-beds, I therefore divided the succession of 

 beds, as in the Paris catalogue before mentioned, and have since 

 briefly described my divisions in a little work recently published at 

 Sydney §. These divisions conveniently group the strata, even if, 

 eventually, they have no direct bearing on epochal succession, though 

 there really appears to be a sort of grouping in the fossils equivalent 

 to that in the strata themselves. 



It must, however, be observed that the distinguishing feature of 

 the strata in Australia is their variableness; and to so great a 

 degree is that observable, that I, for one, would scarcely venture in 

 any part of the coal-fields to trust any stratum further than I could 

 see it. 



Notwithstanding this, however, there are four main groups of 

 strata, generally sufficiently distinct for such divisions as I have 

 made, and which show that it is scarcely right to class them, as has 

 been done, in two widely distinct formations. 



The evidence now collecting as to the formations in other countries 

 seems also to show that, so far as they are concerned, but little light 

 is thrown on the age of the Australian coal-beds ; for if, as Baron de 

 Zigno maintains [|, the Bichmond plants, and, as Mr. Bunbury says 5Tj 

 the Indian plants do not prove what has been deduced from them, so 

 it may come to pass that the evidence hitherto derived from the 

 Australian flora may, on further examination, receive a modified 

 form. 



At present no notice has been taken as to the association of 



* See British Catalogue Expos. Universelle 1855, p. 102. 

 t Ibid., p. 100, and P. S. p. 103. 

 J Ann. Nat. Hist., vol. xx. 



§ Kesearches in the Southern Gold-fields of New South Wales, chap. xiv. 

 || Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, No. 62, p. 112. f Ibid. p. 115. 



