280 NOTES AND EXHIBITS. 



may expect that the subject will be more scientifically handled 

 than it has been in this slight notice. 



NOTES AND EXHIBITS. 



The President read extract from a letter from the Explorer, 

 W. Teitkins, who was formerly second in command of the 

 Expedition of Mr. Ernest Giles. Mr. Teitkins is engaged in 

 exploring north of the Australian Bight, or Bunda Plateau, as 

 it is now called : 



''I have travelled but little since I last wrote. The country 

 for many miles is either an uninterrupted Plain or else Mallee 

 and Spinifex sandhills. The water I have now struck is 100 feet 

 from the surface, and the strata passed through since I last wrote 

 consist principally of sand gradually hardening into stone ; these 

 vary in colour. Before reaching the water there was a thin stratum 

 of Ironstone about two inches thick, lying perfectly horizontal, as 

 indeed do they all. The water was found in a dark coloured 

 sand, but what quantity there is of it I cannot say, in fact, could 

 a section of that well be placed by side of one of the low cliffs of 

 the Leister Hills they would appear very much alike. Pound 

 the hills the ground is black in many places with small nodules 

 of Ironstone, so much so that it has the appearance of the ground 

 about a coal pit, and at the foot of some of the little cliffs huge 

 Ironstone boulders are lying, having the a]3pearance as if but 

 yesterday they had been thrown upon the surface from above, 

 and 3^et the surface is Limestone. Terraces, perhaps, rather than 

 cliffs these might be called. It is a remarkable thing that no 

 granite is to be found north of the Oldea Sand Pange, and I have 

 travelled everywhere in the neighbourhood, and the blacks say 

 that the nearest granite is at Wynbring, which is 120 miles to 

 the eastwards. I have been there, and know that granite is seen 

 upon the surface all through the dense Mulgar scrubs, that reach 



