BY T. W. EDGEWORTH DAVID. 485 



found to conform to the planes of lamination, whereas the latter, 

 as I am informed by Mr. C. S. Wilkinson, are almost invariably 

 found at Joadja to lie with their longest axes at right angles to 

 the planes of bedding, so that they must have been growing in an 

 erect position at the time that the kerosene shale was being formed. 

 Professor Liversidge also mentions this fact {loc. cit. p. 146). Mr. 

 AVilkinson also informed me that the substance of the Vertebraria 

 in these shales is usually found to be converted into jet. 



Where of an inferior clayey character the shale contains great 

 numbers of spherical bodies sprinkled through it, about the size 

 of a small pin's head, and about l-50th to l-40th of an inch in 

 diameter. In places these pin-head bodies are represented by 

 hollows of about the same size, or a trifle smaller, partly filled 

 with a brown resinous-looking powder. This has been observed 

 by the author at Iron Creek, near Mittagong, and also in the 

 core from the recently completed bore at Woodford, in the Blue 

 Mountains. 



At the Homeville colliery, at Stony Creek, near West Mait- 

 land, a band of fire-clay occurs in association with the main seam 

 of cannel coal, which here represents the kerosene shale ; and this 

 fire-clay contains spherical bodies about l-40th of an inch in 

 diameter in such abundance as to constitute about :jth of the 

 whole rock. They consist of earthy ochreous limonite, and 

 become magnetic on being heated to bright redness in the blow- 

 pipe flame. Microscopic sections, however, prepared at the 

 Department of Mines, and exhibited by kind permission of the 

 Minister for Mines, show that these bodies, which at first sight 

 might be supposed to be minute concretions, are probably minute 

 fossils. Their spherical shape suggests that they may belong to 

 sporangia, or seeds, or possibly large spores. They appear to 

 consist of three parts — an amorphous nucleus, surrounded by a 

 thick zone having more or less of a fibrous radial structure, 

 which last is encased in a narrow opaque ring which forms the 

 outer envelope of these bodies. Were they concretions there 

 would probably be less uniformity in their size, and they would 



