PART 4 .] 
Feislmantel: Fossil Floras in India, 
117 
It is true those beds were first supposed by Mr. Krauss* to be lower cretaceous; but 
this has been shown to be wrong by MM. Bain,f Sharpe,J and Tate.J Mr. Bain considered 
those beds as Liassic; Mr, Sharpe, however, and Mr. Tate declared them from the whole 
of the fossils to be analogous with the great Oolite in England. Also Dr. Waagen speaks of 
them as Jurassic. With the fossils of those strata many of the mollusca in the uppermost 
strata of Kach are identical, or very nearly. 
Thus it would seem that the decision from the four Portlandian cephalopoda may not 
bo final; but if that determination should be confirmed by the whole marine fauna, I will 
willingly accept the decision, as I have already done in the analogous case of the upper coal 
seams of Bohemia, where the gas-shale contains Permian animals with a carboniferous flora. 
I would next notice some points relating to the lower Gondwana groups, upon which 
Mr. Blanford’s conclusions were rather premature. It will appear — 
a-—That the contrast between the floras of the upper and lower groups of the 
Gondwana system is not so very decided; no more so than between the 
Jurassic and Triassic formations elsewhere. 
b. —That the affinities of our Damuda flora with that of the mesozoic epoch and 
especially of the triassic formation are overwhelming; and that the argu¬ 
ments for this conclusion are not derived from three species discovered only 
last year. 
c. —That the analogy with the flora of the lower coal strata in Australia is com¬ 
paratively weak. 
a.—Relation of the floras of the upper and lower Gondwana groups. 
That there is a certain contrast between the flora of the lower and upper portion of the 
Gondwana Series is, as I think, quite natural, both belonging to distinct formations ; the 
former considered by me Triassic, the latter being Jurassie; but I think the break is not more 
distinct than between Trias and Lias, or between Trias and Oolite, or even between Rhmtic 
and Oolite in any country. 
We find, for instance, scarcely any identical species in the Buntsandstein of the Vosges 
and in the Lias of the Alps or in the Oolites of England, and we find also no species identical 
in the Rhsetic strata and the Oolitic strata of England. 
The triassic strata of the Vosges are, as everybody knows, marked especially by 
Schizoneura and some of the Coniferous genera as Voltzia and Albertia. None of these 
occur in Lias or Oolite in Europe; and the Cycads in the European Trias also are very rare, 
although not wanting. 
Here in India the relation or the passage between the upper and lower portion of the 
Gondwana Series is paleontologically much better marked— 
a. —Indirectly, or by the strata themselves, and especially through the Panchet 
group. 
This contains some rhietic fossils, which formation is altogether a transitive 
group between the Trias and Lias ; our Eajmahal beds being of this latter 
* Nova Acta Lecpoldina Ac. Nat. Curios., Vol. XXII, Part II, p. 456 ff„ PI. 49, f. 2. 
t Transact. Geol. Soc., London, Vol. VII, 2nd Ser., p. 175 ff. Pi. XXII, etc. 
t On South African fossils : Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc„ 1807, p. 140 £f,, Pis. V—IX. 
