REVIEWS. 
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fossil wombat, from tbe pliocene gold drift of Dimolly, closely related to 
the Phascolo7iiys Mitchelli Oiv. from the Wellington caves in New South 
Wales. Professor McCoy considers these gold drifts are not alluvial, but of 
the more ancient pliocene tertiary period, at least as old as the mamma- 
liferous crag, and corresponding in age with the gold drifts of the Ural. 
Whatever may be the age of the Australian drifts, we should take excep- 
tion to the Ural gold drifts being placed in the crag period, and rather refer 
them to a later geological age. For, as remarked by Sir R. Murchison, the 
Uralian detiitus contains in many places remains of the same extinct fossil 
quadrupeds as are found in the coarse gravel of Western Europe. The 
mammoth, Bos aurochs , JRhmoceros tichorinus , and many other mammalia 
were unquestionably contemporaneous denizens of Europe and Asia. As 
respects Siberia, they appear to have been exterminated, if not simul- 
taneously, at least previously to the existing conditions of the earth’s surface 
in the northern hemisphere, the Bos aurochs being the only one of these 
huge animals which, as far as we know, has been preserved to our days. 
Species of volutidae are described, some of which indicate representative 
forms of the English Eocene tertiaries, although belonging to different sub- 
genera ; also new species of peculiar cycadeous plants, from the mesozoic 
coal strata ; a palaeozoic lepidodendron from the carboniferous sandstone of 
Gippsiand, which is scarcely distinguishable from the L. tetragonum, Sternb., 
of the European palaeozoic carboniferous deposits, and is probably identical 
with a plant from Queensland, referred by Mr. Carruthers to the Devonian 
L. nothum ; and two remarkable starfish, from the upper silurian rocks 
belonging to the genera petraster and urasterella, the latter form nearly 
related to the Ur aster Buthveni of the upper silurian grits of Westmoreland. 
The determination of the Palaeozic fossils by Professor McCoy fully corrobo- 
rates the suggestions made some years since by Mr. Selwyn and his 
colleagues, derived from their laborious stratigraphical investigations as to 
the age of the gold-bearing rocks of Victoria. For Mr. Selwyn remarks, in 
the published Report of 1853 — although he has not been able to detect any 
organic remains in these rocks, and has therefore no good evidence as to 
their precise geological age, but, judging from their lithological character 
and general appearance — he should consider them to be the equivalent of the 
Cambrian or lower silurian strata of Great Britain, portions of which, as seen 
in North Wales, they precisely resemble. And again, in the Report for 
1854, reiterates the same opinion, from having found abundance of organic 
remains both in the auriferous rocks of Mclvor and in the clay slates, shales 
and sandstones near Melbourne, of which fossils a list of some genera and 
species were given ; from which it appears that the labours of the geologist 
in the field were confirmed by the study of the palaeontologist in the cabinet. 
It is the description of some of the specimens from the collections made 
by the staff of the Geological Survey of Victoria, under the direction of Mr. 
Selwyn, up to 1868, which form the subject of the present memoir, and 
which we hope will be as ably continued by Professor McCoy. 
