494 NEW SOUTH WALKS. 
Spirifers, with strong coste, are carboniferous forms.* The Sperifer 
glaber occurs in the coal beds of England, Europe, and America, and 
also extends into the Devonian. M’Coy mentions also as Australian 
fossils, the Spirifer calcarata and Sp. attenuata, British carboniferous 
species.t The Terebratula hastata has its representative in the T. 
amygdala. The Cypricardia sihqua is near the C. modiolaris of 
M’Coy,t and may be the same. The species of Pleurotomaria, 
Conularia, Productus, Pholadomya (Allorisma), Pecten, Astarte, Nu- 
cula, and Bellerophon, as well as Fenestella, are carboniferous in 
character. The absence of Orthocerata and Cyathophylla, and the 
rarity of Crinoidal remains, is all in favour of the deposits being as 
recent as the carboniferous epoch. A few genera are peculiar, but not 
as many as might have been supposed in the antipodes of Europe. 
The coal fossils of New South Wales, where examined by us, are 
of more uncertain chronology. They differ from those of the American 
and European carboniferous beds in the following points :— 
1. Abundant remains of coniferous wood, in logs and stumps. 
2. Absence of arborescent ferns. Stigmarie and Sigillarie are rare, 
though recently reported to exist there by the Rev. W. B. Clarke.§ 
3. The rarity of compound leaved ferns, and the great quantities 
of Glossopteris, the Browniana constituting nine-tenths of all the 
buried leaves. 
4. Absence of true Calamites, and the presence of the thin and 
fragile Phyllothece. 
5. The close relation of the species of Pecopteris, Glossopteris, and 
other genera to the Oolitic coal plants. 
The same or allied fossils occur at the coal basins of Van Diemen’s 
Land, and also at the Burdwan coal field, India. It is not known 
* The Spirifer antarcticus of the Falkland Islands, described by Morris and Sharpe, 
(Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., No. 7, il, 274, and plates 10 and 11,) is quite near the Sp. 
avicula or vespertilio from Illawarra; and the Sp. Hawkinsii of the same region re- 
sembles a Glendon species. 
+ Foss. Bot. and Zool, Aust., in the Ann. Mag. Nat. Hist., xx. 2382, 1847. 
+ Carb. Limestone and Foss. of Ireland, 4to. 1844, pl. viii. fig. 27. 
§ Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc., iv. 60, No, 18.—Mr. Clarke states that the same coal beds 
probably occur on the Mackenzie, lat. 30°, 600 miles north of Newcastle ; also at Port 
Essington in North Australia, as observed by Leichardt. 
Lepidodendra are reported by him as occurring on the Paterson, and in “ the hard 
siliceous metamorphic rocks of Colacola on the Allyn, with a multitude of Orthide, 
Atrype, Trilolites, Strophomene, &c.,” fossils which indicate a greater age for the asso- 
ciated plants than that of the Newcastle coal. 
