38 ANNIVERSARY ADDRESS. 



which the beds were laid down ; and a limitation of the series 

 in an upward direction, where merging into the succeeding 

 Clarence and Hawkesbury-Wianamatta Series. 



Marine Carboniferous beds are known to exist in Western 

 Australia, but too little has yet been accomplished to show their 

 relation to those of Eastern Australia. 



The rocks known as the Hawkesbury-Wianamatta, including 

 with them the Clarence Series, possesses a flora of a still stronger 

 Mesozoic type than the Upper Coal Measures, but much yet 

 remains to be done before any determinate views can be arrived at. 



The remains of Labyrinthodonts are met with sparingly, and 

 those of fish much more frequently — which seem to bear out the 

 Triassic age assigned to these beds • but the whole question is at 

 present such an open one, that it may practically be described 

 as new. 



Much doubt at present hangs over the relations of the other 

 Mesozoic deposits of Australia. In Queensland and Victoria are 

 Mesozoic coal and plant-bearing strata of doubtful stratigraphical 

 position. In the former Colony we have the Oakey Creek beds, 

 near Cooktown; those of the Burrum Coal-field, near Maryborough; 

 and the Ipswich Coal basin. In Victoria is the Bacchus Marsh 

 Sandstone ; the Capes Patterson and Otway series, and the beds 

 of the River G-lenelg. All have more or less yielded fossils, and 

 require to have their correct horizons indicated, in which 

 Palaeontology will play no mean part. The late Mr. Charles 

 Moore endeavoured to show the existence of almost all the 

 Mesozoic stratigraphical sub-divisions from the Lias upwards. 

 A critical examination of his paper will show that the author was 

 led away by his enthusiasm for the subject, and endeavoured to 

 prove too much on too little data. There is reason to believe, 

 however, that in Western Australia beds probably of Oolitic age 

 do exist. But where they pass into, or what relation they bear 

 to the immense formation occupying so large a part of Central 

 and Eastern Queensland, and South Australia, and which even 



