New South Wales. 
461 
of recent geological age, and not one of the oldest countries of 
the globe, Mr. Clarke sent home to England a collection amount¬ 
ing to more than four thousand specimens of rocks and fossils, of 
which the zoological remains were collected by himself, and the 
botanical partly by himself, and partly by the Rev. C. P. N. 
Wilton. These specimens were transmitted to the Rev. A. Sedg¬ 
wick, Professor of Geology in the University of Cambridge (in 
the Woodwardian Museum of which University they are now 
placed), and were submitted to examination and anatomical com¬ 
parisons by Mr. F. M’Coy, Professor Sedgwick’s assistant, and 
a geologist of considerable eminence. 
The result of Mr. M’Coy’s examination will furnish matter for 
the subsequent remarks; but as affirming the general truth of the 
opinion expressed before the Coal Inquiry Committee, the follow¬ 
ing passage from Mr. M’Coy’s account may be taken as conclusive. 
“In the underlying rocks I have been able to determine 83 
species of animal remains, of which 14 are Zoophyta, 3 Crinoidea, 
4 Crustacea, 25 Brachiopoda, 24 Lamellibranchiata, 6 Gastero¬ 
poda, 4 Pteropoda, and 3 Cephalopoda (including Bellerophon). 
Of these 4 genera and 32 species are figured and described as new. 
Those 83 species belong to 39 genera, all of which (with the 
exception of the genera Tribrachyocrinus, Pachydomus, Notomya, 
and Eurydesma —new forms at present only known in Australia) 
are abundant in the carboniferous rocks of Britain, many of them 
not being found in any higher series, and several of them not 
being known in any older deposits; so that the age, even if we 
only look to the genera of the fossils, is clearly limited to the 
carboniferous period ; but when we descend to the critical exami¬ 
nation of species, we find so extraordinary and unexpected an 
amount of agreement between these beds and the similar shales, 
sandstones, and impure limestones forming the base of the carbo¬ 
niferous system in Ireland, that it is impossible not to believe them 
to be nearly in the same parallel, and there is equal difficulty in 
imagining them to be either younger or older than those deposits. 
Of these species, no less than eleven are believed to be positively 
identical, on the most careful comparison of the Australian and 
