RECORDS 
OF THE 
GEOLOGICAL SUltVEY OF INDIA. 
Part 4.] 
1876 . 
[November. 
Notes on the age of some fossil floras in India, by Ottokae Feistmantel, m. d., 
Geological Survey of India. 
VI, VII AND VIII. 
VI.— On the homotaxis of the Gondwana System. 
In the last number of the Records {supra p. 79) there is a clearly written paper by my 
colleague Mr. W. T. Blanford, calling in question the general value of geological homotaxis 
as drawn from the fossil remains of terrestrial life, and based upon an analysis of the 
evidence for the age of our Gondwana series. The general question may safely be left to 
time for settlement. I have no fear that the higher forms of animal and of vegetable life 
can fail to tale their due place in the adjustment of the records of the earth’s history—a 
place proportionate and analogous to their importance in the world; and I therefore regret to 
see the question brought forward in the unbecoming and unreal aspect of a dispute between 
geologists and palroontologists. 
Regarding the particular case, there is much to bo said in correction of it as stated by 
Mr. Blanford. Perhaps I owe some apology for having left it possible to be so stated ; but 
I had no idea that this discussion would be so precipitately raised, while still the materials 
for it are under examination. I might otherwise, in the notes already published, have 
anticipated some of the most serious objections brought forward in the paper under notice. 
I had postponed these niceties of detailed comparison till the data for it were more com¬ 
pletely worked out, being content to state broadly the facies of each local flora. I must, 
however, as briefly as possible, remedy that omission of mine. In doing so it will be neces¬ 
sary to mention undescribed fossils ; which, however, I describe shortly in an adjoined paper. 
As to the Each group, I had already fully noticed f supra p. 29) as a “ paleonto¬ 
logical contradiction” the discrepancy betweeu the homotaxis of the group as derived from the 
plant remains, and as judged from the fossil cephalopoda, when we find strata with a middle 
jurassic flora intercalated with and overlying strata with four cephalopoda of Portlandian 
affinities. It would indeed be rash to question the determinations of the cephalopoda by 
Dr, Waagen ; but it must not be forgotten that all the fossil mollusca and other fossils are 
