PLANT-BEARING SEEIES OF INDIA. 541 



suits of his own personal observations on the geology of India. He 

 referred to the still stronger evidence which the Karoo beds will 

 probably afford when their reptiles shall have been all worked out. 

 Their Palseoniscan fishes would form no exception to their mesozoic 

 character, as Paloeoniscus occurs in the English Trias. The conglome- 

 rate bed at the base of the Karoo, though described as glacial in Natal, 

 presents peculiarly volcanic characters in other parts of South Africa. 

 Referring to the occurrence of a Labyrinthodont in Australia, Prof. 

 Jones dated the rise of the inquiry into the extent of Mesozoic land 

 in the southern hemisphere from Prof. Huxley's notice of this and 

 other Amphibians and his own observations on the range of Estherice. 

 He thought that the Mesozoic plant-bearing and reptiliferous beds 

 of Carolina and Virginia had very similar relations to those men- 

 tioned in the paper. In conclusion he referred to the more recent 

 glaciation of South Africa described by Mr. Stow, and also to Mr. 

 Belt's popular exposition of the hypothesis of bipolar glaciation, and 

 suggested that the earth's passing through cold stellar spaces might 

 perhaps be the real cause of glacial epochs. 



Mr. Drew wished to know what were Mr. Blanford's views as to 

 the land from which the river came that deposited the strata with 

 which the plant-remains were associated. "With such great thick- 

 nesses as 11,000 and 15,000 feet of fluviatile beds, the occurrence 

 of which implied a corresponding amount of sinking, there must, he 

 thought, at one time have been very high land, which was thus 

 drained and denuded. He inquired what portion, if any, of this land 

 now remains. 



Mr. Carrttthers said he thought that in South Africa there are 

 four distinct plant-beds, and that the base-bed is higher than Per- 

 mian, belonging to the Jurassic series, and probably to the Oolite. 



Mr. Woodward was pleased to find that the author had added 

 further evidence, derived from the fossil flora of the Mesozoic series 

 of India, in corroboration of the views of Huxley, Sclater, and others 

 as to the former existence of an old submerged continent (" Le- 

 muria"), which Darwin's researches on coral reefs had long since 

 foreshadowed. Mr. Blanford's observations on the former existence 

 of glaciers at much lower levels than the present snow-line of India 

 added another valuable piece of evidence to those collected by Mr. T. 

 Belt in Nicaragua and elsewhere. But any theory pretending to 

 account satisfactorily for the glacial epoch, must not only explain the 

 lower level of former glaciers in the tropics, but the former existence 

 of a warm, temperate, and even subtropical fauna and flora in high 

 northern latitudes, as shown by Heer, M c Clintock, and others, not 

 to be provided for by Croll's theory or that of Balfour Stewart, but 

 by periodic variation in the inclination of the earth's axis, as sug- 

 gested by Belt, and long since by the Rev. Prof. Haughton in 

 the Society's Journal. 



Mr. Bauerman considered that the author's conclusions were in 

 the main borne out by the evidence afforded by those portions of the 

 Indian coal-fields with which he was acquainted. He thought, 

 however, that there was a difficulty in the precise correlation of the 



