228 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GHOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
but found they had already been sold, and I learnt that they were 
afterwards conveyed to Portugal. 
In a paper read at the British Association Meeting at Cambridge, 
in 1862 (see Report of Transactions of Sections, p. 83), I gave an 
account of a series of secondary fossils which I had found displayed 
in a temporary museum at a Meeting of the Somersetshire Archeeo- 
logical and Natural-History Society at Wellington. These had been 
collected and sent over to this country by Mr. Clifton, a good observer 
and naturalist in Western Australia. ‘They were exhibited by W. 
A. Sanford, Esq., F.G.S., of Nynehead Court, who had resided in 
an official capacity in Western Australia, and ‘they had been in his 
possession about six months. He informed me that they had been 
more than twelve months in reaching England, that he had previ- 
ously seen and examined them in the colony, whilst in the hands of 
Mr. Clifton, and that he had remarked to him how much they appeared 
to resemble Huropean forms. They had been in the possession of 
Mr. Clifton for several years: hence it appears that, although they 
had not been made known before my paper above referred to, they 
were really the earliest evidence obtained of the presence of Meso- 
zoic beds on the Australian continent. The Rey. W. B. Clarke has 
alluded to some of the fossils of this series in papers in the Journal 
of the Geol. Soe. vol. xxiii. p. 8, and in a contribution to the American 
Journal of Science for May 1868. 
The only addition that has been made to our knowledge of the 
Australian Secondary rocks and their fauna, since the above, has 
been the description, by Prof. M‘Coy, of a portion of an Ichthyo- 
saurus, which he has described under the name of J. australis, and. 
which he supposes may be from the Lower Lias. The only account 
I have seen of this discovery is in the ‘Illustrated Australian 
News’ of Sept. 6, 1868, in which are figures of a portion of a head, 
with the eye well perserved, a part of a paddle, eight vertebre, and 
fragments of three ribs. These remains were described by Prof. 
M‘Coy, at a Meeting of the Australian Royal Socety—though in the 
abstract of the paper no description of the locality, or sections of 
the strata from which it was obtained, are given. When perfect, 
the specimen, it is stated, must have been about 30 feet long, in 
which case it would have been nearly equal in size to our largest 
European species. It would be important to learn, from any associ= 
ated fossils, whether this is a Liassic species, or if it comes from one 
of the members of the Oolitic series; for up to this time I have seen 
no organic remains which indicate a Lower-Lias fauna in Australia, 
though, as I shall show that the Middle and Upper Lias are there 
represented, there appears to be no reason why the Lower Lias also 
should not be found. 
Having given the above summary & our knowledge of the Mesozoic 
geology and paleontology of Australia up to this time, I have now 
to offer more detailed evidence on these points; and I shall de- 
monstrate the existence of a Secondary fauna in Western Australia 
and in the Queensland colony, much larger than has hitherto been 
supposed. 
