ANNIVEESAEY ADDEES9. 27 



including coal, from 1851 to 1873, and upwards of four thousand 

 vertical feet of strata have been pierced in the search for coal, 

 yet it is found necessary in this year of grace to send for the 

 ISTew South "Wales Examiner of Coal Fields to find it, if possible, 

 for those unquestionably able geologists who have declared over 

 and over again that it cannot exist in any great payable quantity.* 

 For my own part, I do not believe that the gentlemen at the head 

 and on the field staff of the late Greological Survey Department 

 could have been mistaken, though I sincerely hope that my 

 friend the Examiner may receive a crown of Griossopteris and 

 Tertebraria for his pains. The field staff of the survey alluded 

 to would do honor to any scientific body in the world ; and we 

 may suppose that all that could be done has been done to find 

 what Nature either never deposited or has removed by denuda- 

 tion. At any rate, we have the confirmation of this view in the 

 opinion long ago expressed by the late experienced Director of 

 the Geological Survey of Victoria. 



A question, as the members of this Society well know, has 

 been raised as to the age of our worked New South Wales coal ; 

 and, basing his opinion on the existence of certain plants in the 

 beds of the formation. Professor M'Coy holds that the coal now 

 supplying the markets is not of Palaeozoic, but of Mesozoic age, 

 and of the Oolitic epoch. My own opinion has been that it is 

 not Mesozoic, but Palaeozoic. Finding that, after great search for 

 coal in Victoria, nothing valuable could be discovered, a Com- 

 mission issued by the Parliament invested three gentlemen 

 (Mr. Clement Hodgkinson, Mr. E. Brough Smyth, and Mr. 

 Thomas Couchman) with the direction to report upon the coal- 

 fields of " the south-eastern part of the Colony." This was a 

 praiseworthy proceeding, and I am sorry to find that it has not 

 been successful. .Out of forty-nine seams enumerated, there 

 are but three that attain the thickness of a foot, and of these 

 a foot seam is said to occur at Cape Otway ; and at Cape 

 Paterson are two, respectively 4 feet and 3 feet 6 inches thick. Of 

 course, as the Report states, there may be others ; but such are 

 * See Appendix C. 



