344 W. B. Clarke on the Sedimentary 
Queensland, full 600 miles distant. Professor M’Coy having 
believed the coal of New South Wales to be Oolitic, and be- 
lieving the Pentacrinites, &., to be Oolitic also, and Lepido- 
dendron having been stated to be found in beds below the 
coal in marine beds of assumed Devonian age, it was too hastily 
inferred that eae M’Coy and myself were writing of two 
distinct coal epochs. 
That the coal measures of New South Wales are, cab: i 
truly Carboniferous, has been since determined by - plant evi- 
dence ; for in Queensland, where the Newcastle coal comes 
can be identi tified, a plant very near to, if not the same as, 
Alethopteris lonchitica, has been found, and there =e - the 
present Exhibition several examples of it. (See No. 470.) 
Moreover, near Stroud I long ago detected a inagsihadll fern, 
in beds which belong to the Hunter river coal ag grains, which 
Sir C. Bunbury has named Adiantites eximiu 
Whether the masses of coal exhibited look more like a 
Another ground on which the age of the New South Wales 
coal isputed is, that in Victoria there are certain 
beds which (me teste) resemble some of my Wianamatta beds, 
and therefore, assuming them to be Oolitic, New South Wales 
was involved in that dictum also. ss the true European 
coal measures (according to Mr. Sel , “so far as is known 
at present, do _ exist in Victoria ;” nor shi Glossopteris been 
found there at all. Moreover, the Survey has sunk through 
— feet of pb eters beds, without finding a profitable 
seam anywhere ; and, though the limestones of | Gipps’s Land 
are acknowle edged as Lower Carboniferous or Devonian, there 
is not an atom of evidence to be obtained in Victoria as to the 
ndary age of the New South Wales coal. Thus stands 
the question at this moment. If now we turn to Tasmania, we 
have clear evidence as to the occurrence there of true Paleo- 
zoic coal, and if we pass on to Queensland we have equally 
clear evidence ; and, what is more, there are sections on the 
Bowen river (full 1,000 miles from Sydney), in which the 
whole history of the coal beds may be read off without — 
Mr, Daintree writes thus :— “The Bowen river Coal se 
would afford more conclusive sections in the upper portion hae 
Your own ; since, besides the seams of coal lying at the base of 
the Bowen river river series, interstratified with beds containing @ 
arine fauna, which Professor oy 
lar fauna, resting on beds with abundance of tube 
