24 Sedimentary Formations 
dispute, but who, like all the world, must necessarily be amenable 
to facts and logic ; I therefore forego all comments on L.nofhnn 
and I . Australe , and leave the decision where it should rest — in 
the hands of Paleontologists. 
Two points, however, remain for remark on the Devonian. * 
G ratified as I always am (when X consider that I have never 
had an hour's assistance in the field from any individual during 
my thirty-nine years of geological labour to profit by the collected 
intelligence and the host of well-skilled physicists that help to 
make geology what it ought to be) to peruse the recitals of the 
field-geologists of Victoria, I have had especial pleasure in 
reading Mr. ITowitCs description of the Devonian area in CHpps- 
land, and of his researches on the Snowy River and other 
localities in Victoria which I visited and examined in 1851. 
In those days the Devonians were unknown to Australian 
explorers, and even so late as 18G3 only a suspicion existed as to 
the actual relation of the strata about Mount Tambo and other 
places in Gippslaud. 
The limestones of Buchan and Bindi had not been as now cor¬ 
related with Devonian, and the Director of the G eological Survey 
of Victoria himself, in 18GG, bold tlie opinion that the arrange¬ 
ment was such that the limestones were Upper Paleozoic. It is 
not surprising therefore, that in the patch of fossiliferous rock 
in a narrow gully at the very head of the blur ray River which I 
discovered in December, 1851, I should have considered it “ not 
younger than the base of the Lower Carboniferous ” — which 
justifies the remark 1 made in the last Edition, that if Professor 
M 4 Coy was 44 right ” in determining the Devonian to bo the epoch 
of these Gippslaud limestones, 1 could not he far wrong, espe¬ 
cially considering that my discovery of fossiliferous rocks was 
made in a great hurry for want of time to institute careful 
search, during a journey in unpleasant weather, after lying all 
night on the bare ground, on the upper slope of the Great 
Dividing Range, at Kurnoolce (Native Dog Creek), on my way 
from Moambah to Oineo. In 1870 the remark was made by me 
that “ in 1851 ” I held Mr. Selwyu’s view, hut I had no intention 
of disputing subsequent results ; I do not think I was justly 
dealt with when I was reproved for so doing, especially as in 
1870 1 had written in the following words to the Editor of the 
44 Sydney Herald" (in reply to a statement in the 44 Ovens and 
Murray Advertiser" respecting an alleged discovery of an Ichthy¬ 
osaurus at the head of the Iiuli or Murray River) : — “On 1G 
December, 1851, 1 visited the locality and found Marine fossils 
there of an age not younger than the Lowest Carboniferous 
rocks of N. S. Wales. The Victorian geologists consider them 
Devonian.” 
