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 with Mr. Jeffreys as to the number of derivative species in the different members of the Crag. The fauna, however, required further investigation. With regard to the objections of Mr. Wood, he had not on this occasion intended going into details as to the beds above the Chillesford clays ; his object had rather been to show that these latter extended over a large area, and contained in other places than Chillesford the same shells as those occurring there. He did not attach the same value to the presence of Tellina balthica as did Mr. Wood, it being a shell now living and found on the coast. He had not overlooked the importance of the mammalian remains ; but, like Mr. Dawkins, he had felt the uncertainty which, in the case of the Crag, so often attached to their origin, and therefore had not much insisted on them. He thought the divisions of Miocene and Pliocene were well known and generally accepted ; and though the division was arbitrary, he thought the setting in of the Glacial period a good epoch at which to commence the Quaternary period. If we were to go back to some break in the forms of life, we might go back indefinitely.

February 9th, 1870.

Alexander Murray, Esq., of the Geological Survey of Canada, St. John's, Newfoundland, and Frederick William Rudler, Esq., Museum, Jermyn Street, S.W., were elected Fellows of the Society.

The following communications were read : —

1. On the Fossil Corals (Madreporaria) of the Australian Tertiary Deposits. By P. Martin Duncan, M.B. London, F.R.S., Sec. Geol. Soc, Prof, of Geology in Kings College, London.

(Plates XIX.-XXII.)

Contents.

I. Introduction.

II. Notice of the general distribution of the Australian fossiliferous Tertiaries.

III. List of the Species of Fossil Madreporaria.

IV. Description of the Species.

V. Remarks on the Species.

VI. Localities.

VII. The existing Coral fauna of the Australian and neighbouring seas.

VIII. Table of Species and their distribution.

IX. Conclusion.

Introduction.

The tertiary deposits of South-eastern Australia attracted the attention of those colonists who knew something about geology, very soon after the country was settled and examined.

The singular resemblance of the white limestone, chert, and flinty layers of the deposit of the sea-shore, near the entrance of the river Murray, in the Mount-Gambier district, to the chalk of Great Britain, soon struck many of the well-educated men who carried the spirit of natural-history inquiry into those wild settlements. Of