New South Wales. 
61 
may vet liavo to bo modi Hod materially, and many changes may 
yet take place before the geological millennium arrives when 
fellow- workers will lay aside their prejudices, their animosities, 
and their inconsistencies. 
Calling formations by the names by which they arc at present 
known, we may, nevertheless, admitting possibilities and proba¬ 
bilities of local as well as of general phenomena, go a little 
further into the vexata quecstia of New South Wales Carbon¬ 
iferous peculiarities. 
If on other independent grounds the Upper Coal-beds of New 
South Wales can be treated as Mesozoic, it must still be borne 
in mind that Glossopteris and other associated plants belong also 
to a lower group or portion of a continuous series of beds 
which are strictly Carboniferous; nor must it be overlooked, that 
in strata supposed to he missing between the two scries, which if 
present would be Permian (or a new formation of which there 
is no evidence anywhere), the Glossopteris, &c., would in all 
reasonable probability appear there in situ, for it is incredible 
that in such a continuous succession, those plants-.would, as it 
were, leap over the whole original mass of deposits between 
Palaeozoic and Mesozoic without leaving any trace ot the exist¬ 
ence of the genus. _ .. , 
Now, Professor M'Coy in his “ Report on some Dossils irom 
Queensland” (14 Sept., 1S61), mentioned Productus calva and an 
Aulosteqes or Strophalosia which Mr. A. C. Gregory found on 
the east of the Mantuan Downs in 1S5G, and which I submitted 
to the Professor for examination in 1S60, the year I received 
them (as mentioned in the last Edition, p. 33), and these were 
held to ho Permian. Eut Mr. Etheridge considers (Q. J• G. S. 
xxviii., p- 321) that the existence of the Permian requires con¬ 
firmation ; nevertheless, a shell, possibly a Strophalosid , is men¬ 
tioned as having been sent by me to the Daintrce Collection, 
and this also came from the neighbourhood of the Mantuan 
Downs, in the Nogoa district. It may be suggested, therefore, 
that there may bo an outcrop of Permian in that 'vicinity ; 
and if it he so, it ought also to he remembered that 
Sir’T. Mitchell (“ Trop. Amt." 1S4S, p. 240) mentions the 
occurrence of Glossoptcris JBrownii at the base of Mount Mudge, 
and other evidences of the Coal-formation, with Coal but a few 
miles from the Downs. Daintrce has mapped the area in question 
as “ Older Coal Measures” (with Glossoptcris , Spirifer , and l J ro- 
ductus), in an outlying patch of the Comet and Isaacs Coal-fields 
and the furthest western portion of that portion ot that forma¬ 
tion. This possible Permian outcrop would be on the Dividing 
Ranges between eastern, northern, western, and southern 
waters, and intermediate between the acknowledged “ Mesozoic 
and the “ Metamorphic” regions of the map. 
