Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 449 



fossils. The age of these marine beds was shown by Dr. Waagen 

 to be that of the European Coal-measures. Mr. Oldham had, how- 

 ever, further ascertained the presence in abundance of smoothed 

 and striated boulders, evidently transported by ice, in the marine 

 Carboniferous beds north of Newcastle, N.S.W., and he consequently 

 considered these beds, and not the overlying Hawkesbury, the equi- 

 valents of the Bacchus-marsh beds of Victoria, and of the Talchirs 

 of India, a view which was in accordance with the relations of the 

 fossil flora. 



Meantime Dr. Waagen had received from Dr. H. Warth some 

 fossils from the Salt-range of the Punjab. The fossils came from 

 the upper part of a boulder-bed, the resemblance of which to the 

 Talchir group at the base of the Gondwana system had long been 

 recognized, but which had hitherto been classed with a stage im- 

 mediately overlying, containing Upper Cretaceous fossils. The 

 fossils now found by Dr. Warth included two forms of Conularia 

 found in the Australian Carboniferous rocks, besides some other 

 species evidently of Carboniferous age. Dr. Waagen consequently 

 classed the boulder-bed together with other similar formations in 

 other parts of the Salt-range as Carboniferous. There was one 

 difficulty : the fossils just referred to were considered by Mr. Wynne 

 to be contained in pebbles derivative from another bed. It was, 

 however, shown that this did not affect the age of other boulder- 

 beds in the Salt-range, and that the latter were connected with the 

 Talchir beds in Central India by another discovery of Mr. R. 

 Oldham's that a boulder-bed in the Indian deserts was also pro- 

 bably of Talchir age, and that the question as to whether the 

 nodules containing the Conularice, &c. were concretions or pebbles 

 might await further examination in the field. 



Another contribution to the question had been made by Mr. Gries- 

 bach, who had recently found a boulder-bed which, from its character 

 and fossils, he considered as Talchir, in the neighbourhood of Herat. 



It was pointed out that the existence, over such extensive areas, 

 of boulder-beds, all of which might, without any improbability, be 

 of approximately the same age, rendered it highly probable that all 

 were really contemporaneous and due to one Glacial period ; that 

 this period must have been towards the close of the Palaeozoic era, 

 which it may possibly have terminated by exterminating many of the 

 principal forms of life. The peculiar flora of the Australian New- 

 castle beds and of the Indian Damudas, having nothing in common 

 with the contemporaneous European Carboniferous flora, afforded 

 an important proof of distinct botanical provinces in past times. 



LXII. Intelligence and Miscellaneous Articles. 



MAGNETIC INVESTIGATIONS. BY G. WIEDEMANN. 



A APER on this subject appears in the March number of 

 -^- Wiedemann's Annalen, a translation of which will appear in 

 an early number of this Journal. 



The principal results of this research are as follows : — 

 Phil. Mag. S. 5. Vol. 21. No. 132. May 1886. 2 I 



