258 RALPH TATE ON NEW SPECIES OF BELEMNITES 



Dimensions of longest example — length 4| inches, diameter -^ of 

 an inch. 



No perfect specimen has been obtained ; and the guard is usually 

 in a fragmentary state, often incrusted with Polyzoa and mined with 

 galleries of a boring animal. But the physical features of the 

 stratum in which they occur, a calcareous sand full of debris of 

 Polyzoa, and often exhibiting false-bedding, serve to explain their 

 present condition, which is not derivative beyond the circumstance 

 that they have been drifted in shoal water. Belemnites senescens 

 occurs also in the River-Murray cliffs, associated with their common 

 fossils. 



I have a Belemnite from the interior of this province which 

 resembles B. gingensis of the European Oolite, and is consequently 

 unrelated to B* senescens, and a new species allied to B. australis, 

 Phillips, obtained with other Jurassic (?) fossils from Stuart's (for- 

 merly Cooper's) Creek, on the line of the transcontinental telegraph. 



Salenia tertiaria, spec, nov. Fig. 2. 



Form with the characters belonging to the genus, hemispherical, 

 depressed, moderately inflated below, base concave ; mouth not 

 large, nearly circular ; anus subhexagonal, disk with shagreen-like 

 ornamentation, suranal plate smaller than the genital plates. Each 

 interambulacral area with 12 crenulated tubercles in two vertical 

 rows. Poriferous zones straight, ambulacra! areas margined with 

 large granules, between which are two rows of smaller ones, amongst 

 which are scattered granulations. 



Diameter of largest specimen T 6 ^ of au inch, height -f . 



Discussion. 



The President remarked upon the interest attaching to the dis- 

 covery of this Belemnite, which added another to the curious 

 examples of the survival of older forms of life in Australia. He 

 thought it could hardly have been derived from Secondary strata. 

 The Salenia was evidently Tertiary ; and as it was somewhat Creta- 

 ceous in its aspect, it added another to the list of Cretaceous forms 

 which outlived the Cretaceous period. This and similar discoveries 

 showed the impossibility of comparing Australian and English strata 

 on purely palaeontological data. 



Mr. J. S. Gardner remarked that the discovery of Belemnites at so 

 late a period as the Miocene was of extreme importance, as adding 

 another to the list of Cretaceous forms found still surviving at a late 

 period. If Belemnites &c. lived on until the Miocene, might not 

 Ammonites have lived on until the Eocene ? In America there are 

 Cretaceous beds, known as Cretaceous from the presence of Ammonites 

 and other forms, but the fades of whose fauna mainly resembles that 

 of our Eocene. Floras mingled with these are known as Cretaceous 

 floras. Should the presence of the incoming Eocene mollusca be 

 taken to fix the age of the beds, and the Ammonites be considered to 

 jaave survived in those regions to a later period, the floras would no 





