RH^TIC STAGE. 



289 



but when our collections reached Calcutta, our official palaeontologist 

 at that time, Dr. Noetling, recognising one or two specimens of 

 Conocardium among them, affirmed the beds to be either of Dev- 

 onian or Carboniferous age. It is due to Mr. Datta to say that 

 he did not agree with this determination ; and when in th3 follow- 

 ing year he discovered the rich deposits of Napeng, and brought 

 back a fine collection, including well preserved casts of a fossil 

 which Dr. Noetling recognised as Myophoria, the beds were un- 

 hesitatingly referred to the Trias. Subsequently, however, Mr. 

 C. L. Griesbach, then Director of the Survey, and Dr. Noetling 

 visited the localities in person, and on the latter himself extracting 

 a fossil which he declared to be an undoubted Conocardium (see 

 General Report for 1901-02, p. 24), the original supposition, that 

 the beds were Devonian, was reverted to, Mr. Datta still remaining 

 in opposition. The question was not finally set at rest until, in 

 1903, I took a selection of the fossils to the International Geolo- 

 gical Congress, held that year in Vienna, and submitted them to the 

 inspection of several well known palaeontologists. Even then there 

 was a considerable divergence of opinion, but the detection by Prof. 

 Ed. Suess, who with his customary urbanity was kind enough to 

 devote some little time to a study of the collection of a species of 

 Oyster (Alectryonia), showed at any rate that the fossils were 

 Mesozoic ; and that by Prof. Kossmat of the characteristic Rhaetic 

 species, Pteria (Avicula) contorta, determined without question the 

 horizon to which they should be referred. The difficulty of arriving 

 at a decision had been greatly enhanced by the fact that little or 

 no assistance could be derived from stratigraphical evidence ; for 

 in no single occurrence were the relations of these beds to the 

 Plateau Limestone clearly exposed. For instance, in the Plate 

 attached to Mr. Datta's first account of the rocks (see General 

 Report for 1899-1900, p. 96, figs. 7, 8, and 9), the Napeng beds,- or 

 Kyaukkyan Series as they were called in that report, — are shown as 

 forming a synclinal passing under the limestones ; and it was not until 

 the actual boundary was exposed by excavation that it was found 

 that the shales were let down against the limestone by a fault. 



In the end the collections were entrusted to Miss M, Ilealev, 



. , of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, for descrip- 



( haractcrs of fauna. . , . , ± . r 



tion, and the lesults ot her researches were 

 published in the PalcBontohgia Indira in 19(18.' Miss Healey was utile 



1 Now Scries, Vol. II, Mem. No. 4. 



U 



