30 
Sedimentary Formations 
Nor can it be wondered at, that in so large a territory, and with 
such complicated and broken features, details must tor a long 
period to come give way to generalizations. That the two for¬ 
mations seem to have a passage from one to the other is pointed 
out by numerous instances in this Colony*; and it may be illustrated 
by the occurrence of Bornia radiata (see p. 30), which is one of 
the distinguishing fossils of Schimper’s “ Epoquc Ealeanthraci- 
tique ” intermediate between the two (sec Tome iii p. 620), as well 
as by Rhacoptcris which is so common at Smith’s Creek, Stroud; 
nevertheless, M. De Koninek considers the mass of the Lower 
Carboniferous Marine beds he has described to represent only the 
Upper and Middle Carboniferous of Europe. Other instances of 
like kind could be pointed out of passages from the one formation 
to the other. And this I have endeavoured to establish in relation 
to connection of our Coal-seams on the Hunter and elsewhere 
with a Palaeozoic series through the occurrence of genera of plants 
which have generally speaking a Mesozoic character. 
One aim of my labours in Australia has been to show that wo 
have a succession of groups passing upwards so us to present 
collectively one great series of Coal-bearing beds, instead of an 
interrupted widely separated series of formations which have no 
connection with each other. The question between Professor 
M‘Coy and myself was precisely of this character. Ho has held 
that, "no real connection” exists between the beds under the 
Coal and the Coal Measures themselves ; but that u they belong 
to widely different geological systems, the former one referable 
to the base of the Carboniferous system, the latter to the Oolitic, 
and neither showing the slightest tendency to a confusion of 
type.” 
I t is quite true that there may be succession of formations one 
over another without any ascertainable break; and there may be 
also in any given series of deposits of one age interruptions and 
partial dislocations, marking time in the deposit of the strata 
without any actual change of epoch ; and in cases there may be a 
want of parallelism or “conformity” in the beds of one and the 
same group ; and it is conceivable how plants that have 
grown in one age in one country may be found to have grown at 
another age m a distant territory, without the means of our 
tracing the missing links in their connection. And, therefore, 
such plants as Pccopteris • Williamsoni might be found in China, 
or in Australia, as well as in Yorkshire, with or without any 
inference as to oneness of epoch ; and very much discrimination 
and labour may be necessary to discover that the plants are 
identical and have collateral evidence, derived from the corres¬ 
pondence of matrices, clays, sands, or shales in which they are 
imbedded, that they grew near where they are found, under the 
same actual climatal or physiological conditions. 
