3 ° 
Sedimentary Formations 
As to tlie coal beds with no GHossopteris they will go with 
rocks of a more recent date, and there can be no objection to 
class them in the age of the Secondary fossils with which they are 
associated. Professor 3VP Coy himself admits:— “That on mere 
fragments of leaves or other most imperfect or ambiguous 
material no generic nor even ordinal characteristics should be 
founded.” (Observations on Vegetable Fossils of Auriferous 
Drifts , by Baron von Mueller , 1874.” p. 14.) But this argument 
does not apply where fragments even of the same plant occur in 
two series of beds. Besting on, or passing into each other with¬ 
out a break, they would assuredly show that such beds are 
intimately related. 
It the idea be abandoned (and there is no real authority for if) 
that Grlossopteris is an Oolitic plant, and if it be admitted that a 
Fauna has more weight than a Flora, and that it is most probable 
that a floral identity never existed during the same epoch at the 
Antipodes of the European Oolitic area, more reasonable will 
appear the position assigned by me to the New South Wales 
■workable coal-beds. 
Is it more remarkable that plants held to be of Mesozoic age in 
Europe should be found at the Antipodes in a Palaeozoic forma¬ 
tion, than that usually considered Mesozoic mollusca should bo 
found in a similar formation ? And the latter is not merely a 
conjecture but a fact, attested by Paleontologists of eminence. 
For instance, Munster in 1841 found the three genera Ammonites, 
Cera fifes, and Goniatiles in one and the same bed belonging to 
the St. Cassian rocks of Austria ; and now we have Dr. AVaagan, 
of the Geological Survey of India, proving to us that the same 
three genera lrnvo been found in the same bed together on the 
Salt Bange, in the society of Products, Athyris, and other well- 
known Carboniferous fossils, pointing out that the Ammonites 
is there a Palaeozoic genus, which ho places either in the 
upper part of the Carboniferous, or as Dr. Oldham considers our 
disputed coal beds may he, about the limits of the Permian and 
Carboniferous formations. 
Whilst discoveries such as this are being made from time to 
time, what obstinate perseverance is it, to continue to maintain 
that even tlie stereotyped determinations of paleontologists are 
incapable of amendment. (For Dr. AVaagan’s description and 
figures, see “ Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India,” vol. ix, 
part 2, p. 351. Seo also Lycll’s “ Elements,” 1865, p. 436, and 
“Student’s Edition,” 1871, p. 358.) 
Nowhere in N.S.AY\ has there yet been found in association with 
the plant beds any marine Eauna but one, which M‘Coy and all 
other Paleontologists admit to be Bahcozoic. Schimper, in bis 
recent powerful work (Palcontologie v eye tale), does assume on the 
statement of reporters that Glossopteris occurs in the Oolitic 
