150 
Records of the Geological Survey of India. 
[voL. XI. 
supported by arguments which are either inaccurate or insufficient. No reasons 
of any value have as yet been assigned for the separation of the Newcastle beds of 
Australia from the lower coal measures with marine fossils. 
VIII. The Karharbari beds must be separated from the Damndas and classed 
with the Talchirs, and the paleeontological distinction from the Damndas is equal 
to that on the strength of which the Panchets were removed form the Damuda 
series. 
IX. It is just as reasonable to assert that the Damndas and Karharbari beds are 
carboniferous, bocau.se plants, such as Qlossoptcris Broim.iana, which are proved to 
be of carboniferous age in Australia, occur in the higher of the Indian groups, 
as it is to conclude that the whole of the low'er Grondwanas are mesozoic because 
some triassic European forms, such as Voltzia heterophylla, are found in the inferior 
Indian subdivision, but in neither case is the evidence such as to render it wise to 
come to any positive and unqualified conclusion. 
X. That the upper Gondwana may be taken approximately as equivalents 
of the European Jurassic series, and the lower Gondwanas also approximately 
as triasso-permian, but that anything like close definition of minor horizons 
in the Gondwana system, or any attempt at e.stablishing the exact correspondence 
of different groups in India and Europe is premature. 
XI. Finally that, as the veteran botanist Alphonse de Condolle has recently 
pointed out,i ^n attempt to determine geological epochs in countries remote from 
Europe by fossil plants alone, can only lead to error. I doubt whether terrestrial 
and fresh-water animals are much more distinctive of geological age than plants. 
On a review of the whole subject of the age of the Gondwana system I can only 
conclude, first, that Dr. Feistmantel’s attempt to make all the Indian groups fit 
into the established grooves in the European sequence is a failure; and, secondly, 
that the constant assertion that particular groups belong to distinct European 
sub-divisions such as lias, Keuper or Bunter, is misleading and unscientific. I believe 
that the plan pursued by Dr. Oldham and by all the other members of the Indian 
Geological Survey before Dr. Feistmantel’s arrival, of abstaining from any attempt 
at exact correlation, and of using due caution in suggesting relations of beds, was 
wiser and more scientific than Dr. Feistmantel’s positive assertions as to the age 
of various Indian rocks. 
On “Remarks, &c., by Me. Theobald upon Erratics in the Punjab.” 
(Records, Geological Survey of India, Vol. X, p. 223.) 
Referring to these remarks, I wish to suggest that the ambiguity noticed 
disappears when the subject is considered from the general point of view in 
which it presented itself to mo. 
The erratics of the Punjab were treated of in my paper simply as wandering 
fragments, some of which could be attributed to ice flotation, and some to other 
’ Bibliotlieque Uuiverselle, Arch. Sci. Phys. Nat. 1875, Vol. LIV, p. 399. 
