50 
Sedimentary 'Formations 
As to tlio fact of changing an opinion on conviction of being 
wrong, he who so changes is not to be taunted with it unfairly, 
and I do not advance it except to acknowledge that so far as the 
Professor has gone he deserves respect and honour lor the change. 
My only complaint is, that lie has not (/one far enough ; though 
after what he and his colleagues announced in the examination 
above referred to, respecting the sole Mesozoic character of our 
New *South Wales Coals, it is refreshing to find him writing in 
these terms of the Greta and Anvil Creek Coal-seams, — “ The 
beds from to “ n.” (referring to his rc-arraugement of Mr. 
Keene’s specimens) are clearly the Marine Palaeozoic Carboniferous 
rocks, and the Coal found with them resembles the Coal of the 
Southern Coal-fields of Ireland of the same age." But he adds— 
without compunction or authority: — “ Neither this collection, 
nor the sections, nor Mr. Keene’s collection in the Melbourne 
Exhibition, bear out the notion that the Glossoptcrisand Phyllo- 
theca alternate with the marine Palaeozoic shell-beds.” Now had 
“ Second . — * Hawkesbury* beds, with insignificant Coal-seams; no Gloss- 
opteris. To this series Mr. Clarke refers the Grampian sandstones of 
Victoria, though Mr. Selwyn places them with No. 4. (By Grampian 
sandstones I mean the beds constituting the Sierra.) 
“ Third. — 1 Carboniferous* bods, containing the workable Coal-seams, with 
Glossopteris, by far the most abundant fossil. In the lower portions of 
this series four (? five) known Coal-seams are interpolated with strata 
containing a fauna similar in character to that found in the Carbon¬ 
iferous limestone of Europe. 
“ Fourth. — ‘ Lepidodendron’ beds, not associated with Coal-seams, as far 
ns yet known. 
“ If this arrangement is correct — and my experience as a field geologist is 
entirely in its favour—it is of great practical vuluo to us in Victoria in the 
search of workable Coal-seams, &c., &c., . in the hope of finding the Gloss- 
opteris beds. It points unfavourably towards the Ttenioptcris and Zamites- 
bearing beds, which wo have hitherto regarded as our Coal-producers, hut 
which as yet have yielded nothing better than the Cape Paterson seams. 
“Four thousand-feet also of these same beds have been tested hv boring in 
the B eller ino District, and have yielded nothing approaching a workable seam. 
#*####*##* 
“All the facts that we have to guide the field geologist in Victoria, in his 
search for Clarke's No. 3 Carboniferous beds (containing the workable seams 
of New South Wales) are these, —that thoy are very low down in the Carbon¬ 
iferous series j that the lowest beds contain a fauna nearly allied to the Lower 
Carboniferous of Europe ; that Glossopteris is associated with all the Coal- 
seams, and is the most common and characteristic? fossil of the said No. 3. 
This peculiar fauna or flora has not j et been observed in Victoria.” 
(From il Yeoman and Australian Acclimatise)' ,” August 20, 1SG3, No. 100, 
published at Melbourne.) 
It will he unnecessary to point out to any unprejudiced reader how Mr. 
Daintree's “Notes” cited above, known as they must have been to the 
“ Reporters on Coal-fields, Western Port,” nearly nine years before, contrast 
with tlieir lamentation in the year 1872, about the “ non-comparison ” by 
Victorian surveyors of the position of the Coal-beds in the two Colonics, “with 
all tlio exactness practicable.” 
