i66 
Mines and Mineral Statistics* 
3 ^oiinger part of the scries. AVbatcvcr be the value or uselessness 
ol reasoning on the point, this fact still remains — GlosHopieris 
JBrowiiiana does exist in New Soutli Wales and in Queensland in 
coal measures tliat interpolate strata full of palseozoic marine 
lossils, and is absent in tiic latter Colony where the marine 
accompaniments are called Mesozoic, and does not exist at all in 
^ ictoria ‘where tlie Palmozoic and other marine beds are at 2 )resent 
inissiTig, 
As to the division arbitrarily made by Professor M^ Coy in a list 
re-arranged by him, of IVIr. Keene's specimens, separating 
'With G. Browniana and OlojdenW’ from the Palaeozoic beds, that 
excellent Paleontologist may be assured that a plant apparently 
the same as Otopteris ? ovala is coml)ined with Lepidodendroid 
jdants near Stroud, and that at Greta, and at Mount Wiugen, 
txlossopteris is f<uind below liisown detennined Palieozoic marine 
lossils, the smoke from tlie burning seams full of tlio plant at 
the latter locality passing up througli cracks in the overlying 
conglomerate full of Paheozoic shells, &c. 
Kor does the arrangement made of JMr. Keene’s collection agree 
with the actual facts in nature, for the Greta beds are not tlie 
uppermost with marine fossils ; but bods with them lie further to 
the cast in ^v!liL•h Pliyllotheca has occurred at Harpur’s Hill and 
Glossoptcris in the same Avay at Kaymond Terrace. 
Tlien, ns to tlie “ 'cnhjar error"' that heteroccrcal ganoid fishes 
are confined to Palfcozoic beds, which any one acapiainted with 
ordinary treatises on tlie subject may be su])posed to understand 
is^ an error, tbougli scarcely “ t'ulgar" in the ordinary sense 
of that often ofteusively nsed term, A surely it may be permitted to 
conclude from the fact that among all the fishes discovered iu 
our coal beds, and in the beds above the coal, not a single homo- 
cercal tail has been found, the probability is, as Sir P. Egerton has 
surmised, after examination of those submitted to liiin, that the 
Jishen are PaJ<eozoic, especially as the admission is made that the 
‘‘ homocercal struct are is not known in Palmozoic rocks.” {Report 
on Coat Fields. Victoria, 1872, p. G.) 
The fact that the coal beds overlie or interpolate the marine beds 
in what is called conformable order” ought to be considered a 
satisfactory conclusion that no break such as ought to exist under 
other circumstances does exist, because whether the coal measures 
are horizojital or inclined they merely follow the same condition 
in the upper or lower marine beds with which they are always 
associated. 
Tlie argument from the occurrence of fish I'emains, is met by 
the incidental remark that the “ heterocercal ganoid fishes being 
of genera and species peculiar to the locality have no value” in 
determining the age ot the beds in which they occur, may be met 
