New South Wales . 
21 
younger part of the series. Whatever be the value or uselessness 
of reasoning on the point, this fact still remains— Glossoptcris 
Brownian a does exist in New South Wales and in Queensland in 
coal measures that interpolate strata full of palaeozoic marine 
fossils, and is absent in the latter Colony where the marine 
accompaniments are called Mesozoic, and does not exist at all in 
Victoria where the Palaeozoic and other marine beds are at present 
missing*. 
As to the division arbitrarily made by Professor M‘Coy in a list 
re-arranged by him, of Mr. Keene’s specimens, separating “shale 
with G. Browniana and Otopteris ” from the Palaeozoic beds, that 
excellent Paleontologist may be assured that a plant apparently 
the same as Otopteris? ovaia is combined with Lepidodendroid 
plants near Stroud, and that at Greta, and at Mount Wingen, 
Glossopteris is found below his own determined Palaeozoic marine 
fossils, the smoke from the burning seams full of the plant at 
the latter locality passing up through cracks in the overlying 
conglomerate full of Palaeozoic shells, &c. 
ISpr does the arrangement made of Mr. Keene’s collection agree 
with the actual facts in nature, for the Greta bods are not the 
uppermost with marine fossils ; but beds with them lie further to 
the east in which Phyllotheea has occurred at Ilarpur’s Hill and 
Glossopteris in the same way at Raymond Terrace. 
Then, as to the “ vulgar error ” that heterocereal ganoid fishes 
are confined to Palaeozoic beds, which any one acquainted with 
ordinary treatises on the subject may be supposed to understand 
is an error, though scarcely “ vulgar” in the ordinary sense 
of that often offensively used term, - surely it may be permitted to 
conclude from the fact that among all the fishes discovered in 
our coal beds, and in the beds above the coal, not a single homo- 
cereal tail lias been found, the probability is, as vSir P. Eger ton has 
surmised, after examination of those submitted to him, that the 
Jishcs are Palaeozoic , especially as the admission is made ti,at “ the 
“ itomocercal struct ure is not known in Pakcozoie rocks.” (Report 
on Coal Fields. Victoria, 1872, p. C.) 
The fact that the coal beds overlie or interpolate the marine beds 
in what is called “ conformable order” ought to be considered a 
satisfactory conclusion that no break such as ought to exmt under 
ether circumstances does exist, because whether the coal measures 
are horizontal or inclined they merely follow the same condition 
in the upper or lower marine beds with which they arc always 
associated. 
The argument from the occurrence of fish remains, is met by 
the incidental remark that the “ heterocereal ganoid fishes being 
°f genera and species peculiar to the locality have no value” in 
determining the age of the beds in which they occur, may be met 
