I oo 
T. G. HALLE, 
(Schwed. Südpolar-Exp. 
those species which can with some confidence be regarded as identical with Indian 
forms, they are found to number in the different groups: Rajmahal 3, Madras 6, 
Jabalpur 4, Kach i. The Jabalpur and Kach floras are regarded by Feistmantel 
as homotaxial, and since the one species of the Kach group is found also in the 
Jabalpur area the number of identical species in the succeeding horizons would be, 
in ascending order, Rajmahal 3, Madras 6 and Kach- JabaljDur 4. The Rajmahal is 
held by Feistmantel to be an equivalent of the European Lias, the Kach-Jabalpur 
flora is considered as contemporaneous with that of the Lower Oolite in England, 
i. e. Middle Jurassic. The Madras Group, to which the closest agreement is shown 
by the Hope Bay flora, would lie somewhere between or some way up in the Lower 
Jurassic. The parallelisation of the Upper Gondwanas of India with European for- 
mations, however, is by no means satisfactorily established, the evidence being contra- 
dictory in very important points. This is especially the case in regard to the Kach- 
Jabalpur Group. In Kach, the beds containing the supposed Lower Oolite flora 
rest upon rocks with marine fossils — also found associated with the plants — of 
which several occur in the Portland beds in Europe and a couple of others in very 
young Jurassic rocks in South Africa (Medlicott & Blanford, 1879, P- XXXVII). 
If the parallelisation is based on the marine fossils, the plant-bearing beds should con- 
sequently be regarded as considerably younger than Lower Oolite, and it is indeed 
not impossible to imagine that the flora may have lived longer in the Indian Penin- 
sula, which is a typical “Asylum” area in SuESS’ sense, than in Europe. This is at 
any rate easier to accept than an abnormal early development of the marine fauna. 
The Rajmahal flora, which is rather different from that of Kach-Jabalpur but is con- 
nected with the latter by the intermediate floras of the Madras Coast outcrops, would, 
on this reasoning, probably also be younger than is held by FEISTMANTEL. A cer- 
tain amount of evidence in the same direction may be derived from a comparison 
with the Jurassic floras of Oregon and California. These much discussed floras are 
considered to be of Middle Jurassic age, and they even contain some Rhætic and 
Liassic elements. They show large Pterophylhnu {Ctenophyllum)- and Tæniopteris- 
forms like those of the Rajmahal which are regarded as the strongest proof of the 
Liassic age of that flora (Ward, 1900, p. 365). Yet the Jurassic floras of California 
and Oregon are held to be not older than Middle Jurassic: they have even been re- 
garded by some authors as Cretaceous on account of the invertebrate fauna found be- 
low the plant-bearing beds at Elk River in Oregon (cfr. Knowlton, 1910). It would 
appear, therefore, that the Rajmahal flora possibly might be younger than is supposed 
by Feistmantel, just as the Kach flora is shown by its stratigraphical position to be 
probably younger than the Lower Oolite flora, with which it was regarded as homo- 
taxial by the same author. The intermediate floras of the Madras Coast, to which 
the Hope Bay flora shows the closest resemblance, may therefore with some proba- 
