20 Sir R. I. Murchison’s Address on the 
Whilst upon the great subject of Australian geology, I cannot 
avoid touching on a questio vexata which has arisen in respect 
the Oolitic or Jurassic age, while the experienced geologist of New 
South Wales, the Rev. W. B. Clarke, seeing that where he has 
examined these deposits, some of their plants are like those of 
the old coal, and that the beds repose conformably upon and 
pass down into strata with true Mountain-limestone fossils, holds 
the opinion that the coal is of Palsozoic age. 
ter citing a case where the coal-seams and plants were reached 
below Mountain-limestone fossils, expresses a hope that Mr. 
Gould may detect in Tasmania some data to aid in determining 
this question, I take this opportunity of stating that I will lay 
before this meeting a communication I have just received from 
r. Gould, in which he says that in the coalfield of the rivers 
Mersey and Don, one of the very few which is worked in Tas- 
mania, he has convinced himself that the coal underlies beds 
containing specimens of true old Carboniferous fossils. Remark- 
ing that these relations are so far unlike those which he observed 
on the eastern coast of the island where the coal overlies, yet is 
conformable to, the Carboniferous limestone, he adds, that in 
Tasmania, at least, the coal most worked is unquestionably of 
Paleozoic a: 
* Prof. Dana, in his Geology of the United States loring Expedition under 
Capt. Wilkes (Philad., 1849), expresses the conclusion as the eon oF his examina- 
tion of the coal fields of New South Wales (in 1840) that they are either upper 
boniferous or Permian. “‘ While the coal plants point to the upper Carbonif- 
erous, or still higher, the fossils below the coal seem to correspol 8 
with the lower Carboniferous epoch. The conformity and continuity of the series 
ing plates, of the continuation of Paleozoic types beyond their usual limits, indi- 
a fauna as abnormal for the early age of that * a 
oie tie eae ay ony age that most peculiar of continents a8 
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