BRITISH ASSOCIATION MEETING. 



441 



been connected with, or have gone ont from, our home Geological Survey and 

 the Government School of Mines. 



Such were the relations to us of Sir William Logan in Canada, of Professor 

 Oldham in India, with several of his assistants ; of Selwyn in Victoria, of my 

 young friend Gould in Tasmania, as well as of Wall in Trinidad ; whilst Bar- 

 rett, in Jamaica, is a worthy pupil of Professor Sedgwick. Passing over the 

 many interesting results which have arisen out of the examination of these 

 distant lands, we cannot but be struck with the fact, that whilst Hindostan 

 (with the exception of the higher Himalayan mountains) differs so materially 

 in its structure and fossil contents from Europe, Australia, and particularly 

 Victoria, presents, in its palaeozoic rocks at least, a close analogy to Britain. 

 Thanks to the ability and zeal of Mr. Selwyn, a large portion of this great 

 auriferous colony has been already surveyed and mapped out in the clearest 

 manner. In doing this he has demonstrated that the productive quartzose 

 veinstones, which are the chief matrix of gold, are merely subordinate to the 

 Lower Silurian slaty rocks, charged with Trilobites and Graptolites, and pene- 

 trated by granite, syenite, and volcanic rocks, occupying vast regions. Mr. 

 Selwyn, aided in the palaeontology of his large subject by Professor M'Coy, has 

 also shown how these original auriferous rocks have been worn down at suc- 

 cessive periods, one of which abrasions is of pliocene age, another of post-pli- 

 ocene, and a third the result of existing causes. All these distinctions, as well 

 as the demarcation of the carboniferous, oolitic, and other rocks, are clearly set 

 forth. Looking with admiration at the execution of these geological maps, it 

 was with exceeding pain I learnt that some members of the Legislature of 

 Victoria had threatened to curtail their cost, if not to stop their production. 

 As such ill-timed economy would occasion serious regret among all men of 

 science, and would, I know, be also deeply lamented by the enlightened 

 governor, Sir Henry Barkley, it would at the same time be of lasting disser- 

 vice to the material advancement of knowledge among the mining classes of 

 the State ; let us earnestly hope that this young House of Parliament at Mel- 

 bourne may not be led to enact such a measure. 



Whilst upon the great subject of Australian geology, I cannot avoid touch- 

 ing on a queestio vexata which has arisen in respect to the age of the coal-fields 

 of that vast mass of land. Judging by the fossil plants from some of the car- 

 boniferous deposits of Victoria, Professor M'Coy has considered these coaly 

 deposits to be of the oolitic or jurassic age, whilst the experienced geologist of 

 New South Wales, the Rev. W. B. Clarke, seeing that where he has examined 

 these deposits, some of their plants are like those of the old coal, and that the 

 beds repose conformably upon and pass down into strata with true Mountain- 

 limestone fossils, holds the opinion that the coal is of palaeozoic age. As Mr. 

 Clarke, after citing a case where the coal-seams and plants were reached below 

 Mountain-limestone fossils, expresses a hope that Mr. Gould may detect in 

 Tasmania some data to aid in determining this question, I take this opportunity 

 of stating that I will lay before this meeting a communication I have just re- 

 ceived from Mr. Gould, in which he says that in the coal-field of the rivers 

 Mersey and Don, one of the very few which is worked in Tasmania, he has 

 convinced himself that the coal underlies beds containing specimens of true old 

 carboniferous fossils. Remarking that these relations are so far unlike those 

 which he observed on the eastern coast of the island where the coal overlies, 

 yet is conformable to, the carboniferous limestone, he adds that in Tasmania, at 

 least, the coal most worked is unquestionably of palaeozoic age. 



Now, as Australia is so vast a region, may not much of the coal within it be 

 of the age_ assigned to it by Mr. Clarke : and yet may not Professor M'Coy be 

 also right in assigning some of the mineral coal to the same oolitic age as the 

 coal of Brora and the eastern moorlands of Yorkshire ? In his survey of 



VOL. IV. 3 B : 



