BY THE REV. J. MILNE CURRAN. 177 



"The mines, as at present exhibited, do not promise to be 

 remunerative ; the ore appears to be sporadic rather than in 

 regular lodes. 



" On the eastern side of the creek there are numerous fragments 

 of grit stone, containing impressions and casts of Spirifirse, 

 evidently belonging to the coal measure ; these must have been 

 transported some distance." 



In a paper by the Rev. W. B. Clarke on the Transmutation of 

 Rocks in Australasia, read to the Philosophical Society of New- 

 South Wales in May, 1865, mention is made of metamorphic 

 rocks near Bathurst. Says Mr. Clarke, " One of the most remark- 

 able changes I have ever noticed in the neighbourhood of granite 

 occurs a little south of Bathurst. . . slates are converted into 

 mica schist and griesen, and limestone is changed into saccharoidal 

 marble."* 



In 1867, the Rev. W. B. Clarke, M.A., F.R.S., published the 

 first edition of his " Sedimentary Formations." He refers to the 

 " existence of gneissoid strata and of schists, of very ancient aspect, 

 at Cow Flat, near Bathurst."! 



In his annual report for the year 1878, Mr. C. S. Wilkinson, 

 F.G.S., Government Geologist, refers as follows to the geology of 

 Bathurst : — " Immediately north of the village of Perth, near 

 Bathurst, are some table-topped hills — the Bald Hills — capped 

 with basalt. The basalt rests on a very siliceous, tertiary pebble 

 conglomerate, which, in turn, rests on granite. ... I believe 

 that this basalt is an outlier, or remnant, of the basaltic stream 

 which, in pliocene times, flowed down the Campbell's River valley 

 from near Swatch field. The basalt is, in places, columnar, and on 

 the Bald Hills this columnar structure is splendidly shown, the 



* Trans. Phil. Soc. New South Wales, 1862-1865 ; Sydney, Reading and 

 Wellbank, 1866, p. 267. 



t Remarks on the Sedimentary Formations of New South Wales, by Rev. 

 W. B. Clarke, M.A., F.R.S. (fourth edition) ; Sydney, Thomas Richards, 

 Government Printer, 1878. 



