New South Wales . 
2 I 
Britain, and W. Carru fliers, Fsq., F.R.S., F.G.S., Keeper of the 
Botanical Department of the British Museumf is an invaluable 
document, and deserves consultation (Q. J. G. S., vol. xxviii, 
pp. 271,860.) The map, especially the large independent edition, 
and the plates and other illustrations, are highly useful. 
It is interesting to find Dr. Hector stating at the beginning of 
1875 that 2,000 specimens of Lower Devonian or Upper Silurian 
fossils have been obtained from the north-west district of the 
South Island of New Zealand Ninth Annual Report of tie 
Colonial Museum, 1874.”) And equally interesting is it to know 
that New Caledonia also holds out hope of contribution to the 
Middle and Lower Pal reo zoic faunas, as in the Lsle Ducos. 
Leptrena, Spirifera, Orthis, <fcc., occur with rolled B radiiopods of 
the same character as those of the “ Gulf” on the Turon River 
of this Colony. (“ Ann ales des Minesf tome xii, p. 51, 18(57.) 
Monsieur M. P. Fischer is disposed to assign them to the Devonian 
period (“ Bulletin do la 8oc. Gaol, de France IS Mar., 1867).j 
In further reference as to New South Wales, it mavbe well to 
mention tluit there seems to be in parts of the Western Districts 
an exhibition of rocks which resemble in various ways the con¬ 
glomerates of the “Old lied Sandstone” of Europe; such overlie 
the Marine Upper Silurian beds in the neighbourhood of Wel¬ 
lington and elsewhere, and are known to contain Lepidodendra. 
These may be well studied in the ravine of Curragh Creek, where 
they overlie the Favosites beds of Jew’s Creek, &c. They form 
ranges of considerable extent and of prominent features, and 
stretch, according to my observations, to the Coutombals and in 
patches as far as the Lachlan. The occurrence of a peculiar 
species of Lepidodeudron in three of the Colonies, New South 
Wales, Queensland, and Victoria, lias given rise to much con¬ 
troversy as to the age of the rocks in which it occurs. It lias 
been long known to me, hut it is only recently that it lias been 
found by me in widely distant localities, sometimes solitary, at 
others in beds in which other plants of similar age occur. 
It seems indeed as if every individual discovery in the Geology 
of this Colony had a history or literature of its own. 
In June, 1851, Professor M*Coy wrote to me from Cambridge 
respecting the first Lepidodcndron he had seen from Australia, 
and which I had forwarded by the late Rear-Admiral King to 
Professor Sedgwick, and stated it to be L. tetragonum of the 
English Coal-fields. 
The late Mr. Salter, in his letter to me of May 6, 1S59, said, 
however, that the genus was not Lepidodeudron. 
In November, 1868, Sir C. Bunbury wrote to Professor It. 
Jones respecting a collection of Australian fossil plants, including 
the above species, sent home by me and now in the Museum of 
