New South Wales. 
37 
friends and critics on one or both of the assertions that there is 
no connection “ between the Newcastle Coal and the base of the 
Carboniferous” (which may bo true as far as the base is con¬ 
cerned), or that it is “ not older than the Trias, nor younger than 
the Oolite”—so that if the Trias wins, Oolite is no where! Q.E.D. 
Those who deny the asserted age of our workable Coal-seams 
affect to rely on the assumed age of that most prominent plant, 
Glossopteris Broicniana. They say Glossopteris is an Oolitic 
genus, “ Exactly as in the English beds the Glossopteris is associ¬ 
ated with Tceniopleris?' i.e., in the assumed Oolitic scries. To this 
we may reply, that “ Glossopteris Brownian a” which is “ the 
Glossopteris” alluded to in the above extract from the “ Report 
of the Three Commissioners on the Western Fort Coal-fields ,” 
(p. 8), is a plant utterly unknown in Europe and America, and 
only known in India, South Africa,and Australia; and that Treni- 
opteris, which is said to be associated with it in English beds, 
according to Schimper, the most recent expounder of Eossil 
Botany, is a genus which has only five species, all of which are 
Permian, i.e., of Paheozoic age or of Upper Carboniferous. Even 
if one Tamioptcris should be found in the same beds with 
Glossopteris, that fact would not invalidate but would rather 
strengthen my argument. Since the former is Palaeozoic, and the 
latter occurs in the Coal-seams below the beds which are tilled 
with Lower Carboniferous Marine fossils, it is clear that those beds 
and the plant they hold must certainly be Palaeozoic, whatever 
becomes of any other part in the succession of the series or 
group to which they belong. It was attempted to be shown that 
there exists an inversion of beds at Stony Creek, where five 
seams of Coal holding Glossopteris, under *113 feet of acknow¬ 
ledged Palaeozoic Marine beds, occur (the fossils from which I 
sent down to Sir Henry Barkly, who submitted them to Prof. 
M‘Coy), and to meet this I requested that a geologist might be 
sent up from Victoria to test the facts. Accordingly Mr. Dain- 
tree came, and in the“ Yeoman,” a Melbourne journal, No. 100, will 
be found his refutation of the inversion story and a full con¬ 
firmation of my assertion. This circumstance is ignored by the 
Commissioners of 1872, as are all others that do not fall in with 
the imagination of certain critics in Victoria. But I may now 
add that Glossopteris in Coal-seams below the Marine beds has 
been found in other localities, as for instance at Greta, where the 
Coal has been reached below more than 400 feet of Marine strata, 
Glossopteris and other plants also occurring 2 feet 6 inches above 
the Coal. (See Sections No. 1 and No. 2 at the end of this 
Memoir .) 
Not only so, but it is found in sandstones elsewhere, amidst 
the Marine fossils themselves, and in the very same portions of 
rock with the latter. So that no reasonable doubt ought to exist 
