486 NOTE ON THE ORIGIN OF " KEROSENE SHALE,' 



be not so much indented, as they are, into the fossil leaves with 

 which they are associated, 



Mr. W. A. Dixon {loc cit. p. 133) requotes a statement of his 

 from Professor Liversidge's " Minerals of New South Wales " 

 with regard to a coal from Mittagong, which the author knows 

 to be intimately associated with the kerosene shale, to the effect 

 that "the bright lines of fracture were marked by numerous lens- 

 shaped cavities 00 "5 to 0*10 inch in greater diameter, generally 

 filled with a brownish pulverulent carbonaceous matter. These 

 were apparently the impressions and remains of seeds, and they 

 showed traces of a dense cortical layer." Mr. C. S. Wilkinson 

 informs the author that he has observed numbers of similar 

 sporangia or seeds associated with, he thinks, the Lower Lithgow 

 seam at Bowenfels. Microscopic sections of the kerosene shale 

 itself show that it consists largely of numerous flat, elongated, and 

 round or oval particles, some of which at any rate may be referred 

 to spores, spore-cases, or seeds. 



Fossil wood is conspicuously absent from the Lower Coal- 

 Measures in which the kerosene shale occurs. A few fragments, 

 however, are occasionally met with near Maitland in the Ravens. 

 field Sandstone of the Lower Marine Series, which underlies, and 

 in some of the beds of the Upper Marine Series, which overly the 

 Lower Coal Measures. There is no evidence, however, of the 

 existence of large roots or stools of trees in the underclays of the 

 kerosene shale or cannel coal, such roots as do exist being some- 

 what minute. 



The following is a section by Mr. J. Mackenzie, F.G.S., of the 

 kerosene shale seam at Joadja, near Mittagong, in this colony* : — 

 (RooJ) Conglomerate. Ft. In. 



Bituminous Coal 8 



Boghead Mineral 1 



Indurated Clay 1 



Boghead Mineral 1 



Coal and Shale (hole in this) 1 6 



* Mineral Products of New South Wales, &c., and Description of the 

 Seams of Coal Worked in New South Wales, by John Mackenzie, F.G.S., 

 1887 edition, p. 176. 



