470 



Transactions. 



quarries,* chiefly from the latter ; since then operations have 

 been restricted to the Bound Hill workings, but I am unable 

 to quote the amount extracted. The phosphate lies here directly 

 on top of the glauconite sands, the limestone being entirely 

 absent. At the base of the deposit there is a mass of yellow 

 nodules, usually separated from each other by phosphatic green- 

 sands ; above this comes an irregularly undulating band of 

 soft clayey phosphate, often containing glauconite ; above this 

 again come hard yellow nodules. Irregular small lumps of 

 sandstone often occur amid the phosphate, and large masses 

 of white phosphate, more massive than the yellow nodules, 

 are frequent ; incrustations of phosphorite are occasionally 

 found. The workmen often find bones and teeth in the clays 

 and sands among the phosphate ; never yet, to my knowledge, 

 have they found any such organic fragment in the centre of 

 the hard rock-phosphate, so that a concretionary origin round 

 an organic nucleus cannot be assigned to it. The bones which 

 are found are in a very decomposed and broken state, and will 

 rarely bear handling ; they belong to species of an extinct 

 Cetacean family comprising Squalodon and Zeuglodon ; the teeth 

 are those of sharks, and are also much broken up.' Teeth 

 of Carcharodon auriculatus and of species of a Ldmna were recog- 

 nised from this quarry. 



N.W. 



Face at Wilson's Quarry. 

 a. Brown sands, b. Green phosphatic sands, c. Rock-phosphate. 



d. Limestone. 



* New Zeaiand Mines Report for 1902, p. 24. 



