528 HENKY F. BLANEORD ON THE 



a similar succession of beds on the Bowen river, in Queensland, 

 where freshwater shales with fragments of Glossqpteris are over- 

 lain by Producius- and Sjpirifer-he&s. He certainly states, " I have 

 never been able to find the flora and fauna unmistakably represented 

 in the same bed ;" but seeing that the plant-beds are apparently in 

 all cases of freshwater origin, such an association is not to be ex- 

 pected. In the face of this specific evidence, supported by the 

 general testimony of Mr. Clarke and Mr. Jukes, I am unable to see 

 any sufficient ground for refusing to admit that the age of the 

 Australian plant-beds is the same as that of the upper portion of 

 the marine formation containing Carboniferous fossils. Dr. Oldham 

 (long before the publication of Mr. Daintree's corroborative evi- 

 dence) arrived at a similar conclusion*, and inferred that " the 

 Damiida system of our Indian classification will be found to repre- 

 sent (if not in its entirety, certainly in part) the Permian system of 

 European geologists." But he thinks further that it will also be 

 found to include " a large portion of the Carboniferous epoch," and is 

 disposed to correlate the Talchir group with the Wollongong Sand- 

 stones of Australia, remarking on " the strikingly curious identity 

 in the lithological character and structure of the rocks." 



I should myself be disposed to concur in this conclusion, were it 

 not for the evidence of glacial action afforded by the oldest deposits 

 of the Talchir group, which, taken in conjunction with Professor 

 Kamsay's discovery of the glacial character of the Lower Permian 

 breccias, irresistibly suggests the contemporaneity of the two for- 

 mations. 



At the base of the Talchir group, wherever these rocks have been 

 met with, occurs that remarkable boulder-bed first noticed in Talchir, 

 and described in the 1st volume of the ' Memoirs of the Geological 

 Survey.' Its character appears to be very constant. It consists of 

 blocks of all sizes up to 42 feet in circumference f, imbedded in a 

 fine silty (sometimes sandy) matrix, often of a green colour and 

 finely stratified. The blocks have in some cases certainly been 

 transported from a distance of some miles J; but this is not in 

 general easy to ascertain, as the older rocks are frequently of very 

 uniform character over large areas. When this bed was first de- 

 scribed (in Talchir) in 1856, Mr. "W. T. Blanford suggested its 

 glacial origin and the transport of the boulders by ice, seeing that 

 any movement of water sufficiently violent to disturb the imbedded 

 boulders must infallibly have swept away the fine silty matrix. He 

 suggested the agency of ground-ice, and ventured to predict § that 

 further examination would probably end in the discovery of groovings 

 and scratchings on these surfaces. This view of the origin of the 

 boulder-bed for many years found but little favour; but in 1872 

 Dr. Oldham and Mr. redden exhumed from the bed, in the neighbour- 

 hood of the Godavery, " large masses of foreign or transported rocks, 

 the surface of which was polished as perfectly as marble by a lapi- 

 dary — this polished surface being beautifully scored and furrowed in 



* Mem. G. S. I. vol. iii. p. 207. ' t Mem. G. S. I. Vol. vi. art. 3, p. 7. 



| Eec. G. S. L vol. vi. p. 28. § Mem. G. S. I. vol. i. p. 49. 



