New South Wales. 
3 1 
formation of the Rajtnahal Hills of India, hut Dr. Oldham, the 
skilful Director of the Indian Survey, declares that its officers 
have not “ been able to trace , among several thousand specimens , a 
single representative of .the genus Glossopteris from any part of 
these upper or Rajmaital beds .” (See also his statements above.) 
If then, that series of beds be considered Mesozoic on other evi¬ 
dence, and if, as is shown, Glossopteris belongs to a lower group 
or formation there is here an enormous thickness of fossiliferous 
strata, in which the fossils (as before stated) gradually pass down 
to the Devonian. The opposition to this determination arose from 
a preconceived idea that strata bearing Glossopteris could not be 
Palaeozoic, and therefore, that the upper coal measures of New¬ 
castle had no right to be considered older than Oolitic. Put whilst 
these upper measures? produced a fish of undoubted Palaeozoic 
character (Urosthenes australis) ; C\ci\hvo\e\ns granul at us, Myrio- 
lepis Clurkei , and other Icthyolites, examined and determined by 
Sir P. de M. G. Egerton, Bart, to be Pakeozoie, were found by 
me in 1SG5 1,000 feet higher, and of these, photographs were 
exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1SGG-7, and previously at 
Melboiirne the specimens themselves; on which occasion Professor 
M‘Coy reported that their general aspect was that of Triassic or 
Permian fish to which latter (Upper Paleozoic), Sir P. Egerton 
refers them. Alethopteris loiichnica and Adiantites eximius , both 
of which occur in our New South Wales beds, may be held to have 
as great weight as Glossopteris, seeing they occur in an unbroken 
series of beds holding true Lower Carboniferous marine fossils,, 
and are, I believe, considered to be of Carboniferous ago. 
After the evidence from Queensland, and the admission that the 
plant does not exist at all in Victoria (where all marine strata are 
missing also), Glossopteris cannot be cited from that Colony to 
assist in proving New South Wales Newcastle coal to be Oolitic ; 
and there are sections on the Bowen Elver (full 1,000 miles from 
Sydney), in which the whole history of the coal-beds may he read 
off without error. 
A conclusive opinion has been offered on this question by Dr. 
Julius Haast respecting the occurence of marine and plant beds 
of the same age as ours in the Malvern Hill District, Canter¬ 
bury, New Zealand, .who says, in October, 1S71 (N.Z. Geological 
Survey Reports on Geological Explorations, during 1871-2), that 
on the west side of Mount Potts, Upper Bangitata, there are 
“ different species of Spirifera; besides them there are species of 
Productus, Murchisonia, Euomphalus, Nucula, Ortnis, and 
Orthoceras. Most of these shells, of which some broad winged 
Spirifers are very numerous, are according to Professor M'Coy, 
of Melbourne, identical with Australian fossils, and are of Lower 
Carboniferous or Upper Devonian age.” “ Other beds,” he adds, 
“ of equal importance occur in the Clent Hills, in which I 
