Mines and Mineral Statistics. 
175 
As to the coal heels with no Glossoptcris they will ^0 witli 
rocks of a more recent date, and there can be no objection to 
class them in the age of the Secondary fossils with wliich they arc 
associated. Professor M‘Coy liimself admits: — “That on mere 
fragments of leaves or other most imperfect or ambiguous 
material no generic nor even ordinal characteristics should be 
founded.” (Observations on Yerjetahle Fossils of Auriferous 
Drifts^ by Baron von Mueller, 1S74.” p. 11-.) But tliis argument 
does not apply where fragments even of the same ])lant occur in 
two series of beds. Besting on, or passing into each other with- 
out a break, they would assuredly show that such beds arc 
intimately related. 
If the idea bo abandoned (and there is no real author if y for if) 
that Glossoptcris is an Oolitic plant, and if it be admitted that a 
Fauna has moi'c weight than a Flora, and that it is most probable 
that a floral identity never existed during the same epoch at the 
Antipodes of the European Oolitic area, more reasonable will 
appear the position assigned by me to the Xew South Wales 
workable coal-beds. 
Is it more remarkable that plants held to be of IMesozoie ago in 
Europe should be found at the Antijiodcs in a Pnlo'ozoic forma- 
tion, than that usually considered Mesozoic mollusca should he 
found in a similar formation ? And tlic hitter is not merely a 
conjecture but a fact, attested by PaUcoidologists of emiucnce. 
For instance. Minister in ISIl found tlie three genera Ammonites, 
Camiites, and Goniaiites in one and the same bed belonging to 
the St. (.Jassian rocks of Austria ] and now we have Or. AFangan, 
of the Geological Survey of India, proving to us that tlio sa?ne 
three genera have been' found in the same bed together on the 
Salt Kange, in the society of Productas Athyris, and other well- 
known Carboniferous fossils, pointing out that tiio Amnionites 
is there a Palaeozoic genus, which he places oiilier in the 
upper part of the Carboniferous, or as Dr. Oldham considers our 
disputed coal beds may be, about the limits of the Permian and 
Carboniferous foriiuxtions. 
AVliilst discoveries such as this arc being made from time to 
time, what obstinate perseverance is it, to coutiuuo to maintain 
that even the stereotyped determinations of palasontologists are 
incapable of amendment. (For Dr. Maagan’s dcscn])tiou and 
figures, SCO '‘^Memoirs of the Geoloyical t^urvey of India f voL ix, 
part 2, p. 351. See also Lyell’s “Elements,” 1SG5, p. 430, and 
“Student’s Edition,” 1871, p. 358.) 
Nowhere in N.S.W. has there yet been found in association with 
the plant beds any marine F^auna but one, whicli ]\PCoy and all 
other Palaeontologists admit to be Fcdwozoic. bchimper, in his 
recent powerful work (fFaleontoloyieveyetale), docs assume on the 
statement of reporters that Glossoptcris occurs in the Oolitic 
