New Soulli Wales. 
69 
formation, of whatever age it may be; for although plants may be 
swept into the ocean at any period of their existence, they could 
not be bedded in the same masses of stone formed in the ocean 
and amidst the Marine fossils, without belonging to the epoch of 
the latter. 
Such is the case in Australia with Gloasopteris, and perhaps 
some others; hence I claim for that at least a Palaeozoic* age. 
And so with those described by Mr. Etheridge and Air. Moore 
(in the Memoirs above cited) the Mesozoic Narine fossils prove 
the plants to be of that epoch ; and when the same plants occur 
in strata which can he referred to a Secondary formation, and in 
such also as are Carboniferous, it may he readily granted that 
they are common to the two. But in the case of Glossopteris 
no indication is at present producible of its existence in the later 
formations. 
We may therefore refer certain deposits in Queensland, in 
parts of New South Wales, or the Coal series of Victoria, to 
Mesozoic (not Oolitic) times, without trenching on the Carbon¬ 
iferous indications. I do not profess to know—and T know no 
one who is able to tell me—why such arrangements exist (espe¬ 
cially as Mr. Carruthere’s doctrine is true, for instance, that 
Tamiopteris and Gloasopteris are akin in structure) as place 
plants very much alike in some respects in different epochs, 
without confusion, when also the position of the strata is what is 
called “ conformable.” 
It is no logical argument to say that, because there may be 
great deposits of Coal in China or America or Great Britain that 
are not what arc called Carboniferous, therefore there ought to be 
such, for example, in Victoria, when we all know that they have 
not been yet found to exist there, or that the same citations 
would bear out the assertion that the New South Wales work¬ 
able seams are also Secondary ; nor can the adroit alteration of 
the expression Oolitic into Mesozoic, prevent our considering that 
the general term was adopted for the more specific one, because 
those who used it so were aware that they had made some kind 
of mistake, and did not like to own it. 
Now, there are no known Oolitic Marine fossils in all iSew 
South Wales ; and the Oolitic or Jurassic fossils are of such 
extent and variety in all countries, wherever the regions in which 
they occur have been explored, that to put the identity of such 
formations on a few plants , that may after all have no strict claim 
to decide in the cause, would appear to me a very questionable 
proceeding. 
If, for instance, the fishes found by me in the {Kb Tunnel 
Range, near Nattai, are of a “ Triassic or Permian” facies, 
according to M‘Coy, and are Permian according to Egerton and 
Dana, why should the beds in which they occur be set down as 
