New South Wales. 
IOI 
(Mueller). It was given to me by Mr. Lowe of Gooree. I for¬ 
warded it to Professor Owen, who deposited it in the British 
Museum as the type of the species.* 
In many parts of the existing region, all over the surface, 
wherever the basalt rock is not denuded, also near Sydney, there 
are local deposits which might be called “till,” were any Testacea 
found in them; and in the Interior there are widely spread 
accumulations of drift pebbles, which, as on the Hunter and 
"Wollondilly, are rounded by attrition in their long journey from 
the mountains whence they have been derived. Sometimes, also, 
the breaking up of conglomerates has contributed to this drift. 
On Peak Downs there are deep accumulations of drift, such as 
transmuted beds of the Carboniferous formation, igneous rocks 
such as porphyry and basalt, and fragments of the older Paheozoic 
formation. Many of these are encrusted with thin calcareous 
cement, which forms cups of clear calc-spar in hollows of a tine 
porphyritic grit — the same grit occurring on the Warrego, on the 
Ballandoon and Narran ridges, with transmuted quartzite, also 
in wells there and on the Darling near Fort Bourke, in which 
drift fine gold was detected by me to exist on the Downs, and 
has been again reported to me front the base of Bankings Ranges 
on the Darling River, the furthest known Western auriferous 
locality in New South Wales. 
In 18G9 1 reported the discovery of the femur of a bird, at the 
depth of 188 feet, in drift resting on granite, from a well in that 
part of Peak Downs (22° 40' S.) which lies between Lord s Table 
Mountain and the head of Theresa Creek, near the track from 
Clermont to Broad Sound. Compared with the hones of Dinornis 
in the Australian Museum, both the Curator of that institution, 
and myself came to the same conclusion as to its genus, and 
accordingly it was reported in the “ Geological Magazine as 
Dinornis. Professor Owen has, however, removed it into another 
genus Dromornu 1 , considering it to have belonged to a Struthioid 
bird. If it was such, of course (especially after the deep sound¬ 
ings between Australia and New Zealand, established by H.M.S. 
“ Challenger” in 1874), the speculations I indulged on a possible 
former connection between those countries as illustrated by such 
* See “t Tourn. Hop. Soe. N. S. IF. 1877,” voL xi., p. 200. Willi reference 
to this 1 have a communication from Professor Owen, dated 11th February, 
1878, of which the following is an extract:—“ I thank you for your timely 
appeal for the preservation of skulls and skeletons of the existing Marsupials 
prior to their extinction —that is but a question of time. Man is fitted to 
that function, save in regard to such species, man inclusive, of which lie can 
make any profitable use! It is an encouragement to study and to describe 
your fossils, to find ‘ Papers’ so kindly commended as mine on SLhenvrus 
minor. When shall we get a skull or jaw, or fragment of jaw with teeth, of 
your old 25-foot-long-lizard, Merjalania prison? It was contemporary with 
Diprotodon .” 
