3 6 Sedimen tary Formations 
volatile matter between those of Torbanc Hill and New South 
Wales, the latter having by far the greatest amount, with much 
less ash than the former. 
Mesozoic ok Secondary Formations. 
It has been supposed that I have a dislike to rocks of Mesozoic 
age; but the endeavours made by me to bring to light their 
existence in Australia, (see Mr. Daintree’s notes, and Mr. C. 
Moore’s paper in Q.J.G.S., vol xxvi, 22G-2G1) ought to save me 
from any imputation of that kind. I can only say, that whether 
I have been mistaken or not in any given case connected with 
the geological epochs of Australasia, it is not from want of honest 
devotion to the cause of truth, nor from a desire to hold my 
own without reason against those who differ from me, that I have 
in so many publications during more than thirty years of earnest 
inquiry, defended what I conscientiously believe. 
With this admission I may go on to explain, that though I 
hold our worked coal seams, which now extend lower than the 
Newcastle strata, to bo Palaeozoic, there are in Queensland, 
Victoria, and New South Wales, deposits of coal from which the 
characteristic plant and its associates appear to be excluded. 
The rule, I think, in such a case as that before usj should be 
laid down, that plant remains by themselves prove very little as to 
the uncompared age of any formation, but when associated with 
marine fossils , whose aye is determinable, they must go with that 
formation of whatever age it may he; for although plants may bo 
swept into the ocean at any period of their existence, they could 
not be bedded in the same masses of stone formed in the ocean 
and amidst tho marine fossils, without belonging to the epoch of 
the latter. 
Such is the case in Australia with Glossopteris, and perhaps 
some others; hence I claim for that at least a Pal neozoic age. 
And so with those described by Mr. Etheridge and Mr. Moore 
(in the Memoirs above cited) the Mesozoic marine fossils prove 
the plants to be of that epoch ; and when the same plants occur in 
strata which can be referred to a Secondary formation, and in 
such also as are carboniferous, it may be readily granted that 
they are common to the two. But in the case of Glossopteris 
no indication is at present producible of its existence in the 
later formations. 
We may therefore refer certain deposits in Queensland, in 
parts of New South Wales, or the coal series of Victoria, to 
Mesozoic (not Oolitic) times, without trenching on the Carbon¬ 
iferous indications. 1 do not profess to know — and I know no 
one who is able to tell me—why such arrangements exist (especi¬ 
ally as Mr. Carruthers’ doctrine is true, that Tamiopteris and 
Glossopteris are akin in structure) as place plants very much 
