1S/6.] Knowledge of tlie Fossil Flora in India. 373 



b. In the upper coal-strata no marine fauna is found. Glossopteris is 

 very frequent, and is associated with other plants with no carboniferous 

 characters at all. 



c. Below the lower portion of the coal-strata is a formation with a true 

 lower carboniferous flora and the same marine fauna, of which no trace is in 

 the upper (Newcastle) coal-strata. 



cl. From this it would follow that the lower coal-strata, with marine 

 fauna of carboniferous age, had been a long time deposited, or that the 

 carboniferous period had passed away, when the upper coal-strata wera 

 formed, or when that period began when Glossopteris was especially 

 developed, with other plants which contrast with those of the lower 

 portion. 



When later the Glossopteris was found frequently in the Damuda 

 Series, these were at once compared with the Australian lower coal-measures,* 

 although no trace of any marine organism had ever been found in them, 

 and only a flora occurred which was opposed to such a comparison. 



I think our Damuda Series, containing only a flora, cannot be com- 

 pared with the lower Australian coal-strata at all, which contain hardly 

 anything but a marine fauna. 



Such transitional forms as Glossopteris in Australia we find here in 

 India also. 



So in the Damuda Series and the Panchet group the same Schizoneura 

 Gondwanensis. 



In the Eajmahal group and in the Jabalpur-Kach group are the same 

 two species of Ptilopliyllum, Morr., and yet there is a difference in age. 



In the Salt Range in India we find in the carboniferous strata on the 

 one hand the Devonian genus Goniatites, on the other the mezozoic genera 

 JPJiylloceras and Ceratites. 



In the Trias of the Salt Range we find again the same Bellerephon 

 (a purely carboniferous genus) which in the carboniferous limestone is 

 already frequent, and yet all these strata are different. 



So is it in Australia too, Glossopteris survives from the lower coal- 

 strata in the upper ones, the former being characterized by a marine fauna. 



Here in India it is also of no direct influence on the determination 

 of age, while the other plants with which it is here associated certainly 

 are ; it indicates of course only for the whole Damuda Series the same 

 age, as no animal fossils contradict. 



But yet another point must be mentioned : most of our species of 

 Glossopteris are different from those of Australia, and all the other plants 

 in our Dannidas are much more closely connected with European forms 

 than with any in Australia. 



* T. Oldham, Mem. G. S. Ind. II. 



