Geological Survey of Victoria

Abstract

WE have at last a first instalment in the shape of a Decade, from Prof. M'Coy, of Melbourne, Australia, upon the organic remains of that colony. It is entitled, “Prodromus of the Palæontology of Victoria, or Figures and Descriptions of Victorian Organic Remains,” Decade I. The preface, by Prof. M'Coy, states that as the maps and sections of the Australian Survey would be incomplete without figures and descriptions of the fossil organic remains, it has been determined to issue a Prodromus or preliminary publication of the Victorian fossils, in decades or numbers of ten plates each, with descriptive letterpress. The first decade contains matter illustrating six different groups of fossils; viz., the Graptolites, the Marsupiata, the Mollusca (Gasteropoda), gymnospermous and lycopodiaceous plants, and Star-fishes of the family Urasteridæ. We presume that this mode of issuing the decade is an experimental one, as it will require eight or ten numbers of decades to complete one decade of a particular group, depending upon the number of plates devoted to these particular groups as they are issued. We should have preferred seeing a decade on the Graptolitidæ completed at once, or the Asteriadae, or Volutidae, or indeed any other, thus forming almost a monograph of some special group, as a connected whole, as it will be long before a decade of any one group can be hoped for, unless the Professor has a large stock in hand, and store already prepared. If there is one group more interesting than another, figured in the decade, it is the Graptolites: the Victorian species figured are nearly all British, European, and American; no extinct organisms of apparently the same species had so wide a distribution in space. Hall, of America, Carruthers, Hopkinson, Lapworth, Nicholson, Baily, &c., have all elaborately written (indeed still are writing) upon these mysterious Hydrozoa; and Prof. M'Coy, of Victoria, and Etheridge, of Edinburgh, are now investigating the Victorian forms. Surely something definite may be expected, or will be determined, as to their specific value. Monoprionidian forms of the genus Diplograpsus and Didymograpsus are the only genera touched upon in the decade; also one Phyllograptus, P. folium, var. typus Hall, which differs little from our British species, except in being larger. M'Coy describes ten species, four of which are British of Lower Silurian age. Our own gold-bearing Cambrian slates of North Wales thus contain a fauna, the same in time as those “goldfield slates” of our auriferous colony.

Geological Survey of Victoria.

Prodr omus of the Palæontology of Victoria; or, Figures and Descriptions of Victorian Organic Remains. Decade I. By Frederick M'Coy., Government Palæontologist, and Director of the National Museum of Melbourne. (Melbourne: John Frères. London: Trübner and Co., 1874.)