New South Wales. 
27 
I will quote here an additional testimony to the facts already 
declared, respecting the interpolation of our Glossopteris coal in 
the marine beds. Mr. Odernlieitner in his final report to the 
Australian Agricultural Company, says : — “ The lowest coal seam 
at AVollongoug, rests on older Spirifer sandstone, and is covered 
by sandstone, with Pachydomus shells and a few spirifer.” (p. 88.) 
I have paid more attention perhaps, to the Report on the 
Western Port Coal Pields of 1872, than it deserves ; but as it 
contains specific allusions to myself, and in fact is an attack on 
the evidence 1 have conscientiously given on the subject of New 
South Wales Geology, it is only just to that Colony to show that 
the conclusions arrived at in that .Report are “ based” as much on 
personal ignorance respecting our territory, and a pre-determi¬ 
nation to disbelieve the statements of men quite as much entitled 
to be believed as tho reporters in Victoria themselves, as on 
anything else. I am thoroughly persuaded that if such personal 
investigation on his part had taken place, an old correspondent 
and assumed friend of my own would not have dealt with my 
writings as he has done. 
The advocates for the Oolitic (or as now called Mesozoic) age 
of our coal plead the cases of Richmond in America, and India 
as well as China ; Africa is unnoticed. It will be fitting to produce 
evidence on each head. 
As to China, Mr. Pumpelly is the only authority quoted by 
the Victorian Board, who make him to have in 18G2-G5 found 
in tho coal beds fossils proving that “ those beds aro geologically 
of the same age as the Victorian , JS T cw South Wales , Tasmanian , 
and JSTcw Zealand bedsf p. 8, and Professor Newberry is quoted 
as identifying “ these fossils as those characteristic of Triassic or 
Jurassic ages.” In tho Ocean Highways for Nov., 1873, Baron 
von Richthofen says, the Pumpelly observations were only very 
limited in extent, and bis map an hypothetical one made up from 
native reports, “ in which he attempted to exhibit among other 
data, the distribution of tho coal measures in China.” “The 
favourable result at which Mr. Pumpelly arrived, in respect to 
the great extent occupied by coal -bearing strata in China was 
modified in some measure by tho somewhat unsatisfactory conclu¬ 
sion drawn by him, from the determinations by Dr. Newberry of a 
few vegetable remains , that all Chinese measures are of the same 
age as the Triassic formation of* Europe” (p. 311). What is there 
herein of “ Jurassic ” or “ Oolitic” coal ? The coal of China, 
however, found a far better qualified expositor in Baron Von 
Richthofen himself, who from 18GS to 1S?2, made journeys nearly 
all over China, and found coal-fields of enormous extent in many 
districts, nearly every one of which lie personally visited, as he 
tells us in various publications. 
