158 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Vol. Vlii. 



Most of the above I have found in the Victorian beds, and two 

 of them have been figured and described by Professor M'Coy in 

 his Decade No. 1 of the Palaeontology of Victoria. 



The small specimen of calcareous clay from the Katau River 

 on the west side of the Gulf of Papua contains only a few broken 

 fragments of shells ; but it appears to be of the same formation 

 as the clay beds of Hall's Sound or Yule Island. 



The oolitic limestone of Bramble Cay I believe to be also of 

 the upper beds of this Miocene formation. 



Mr. Macleay, in his letter to the Sydney Morning Herald of 

 October 11, 1875, describes the formation of Yule Island as a 

 sedimentary rock, nearly horizontal on the sea face, but with a 

 great dip inwards. The rock itself is calcareous, and composed 

 of corals, shells, echini, &c. — in fact a concrete of fossils resem- 

 bling the coral rag of Oxford. Mr. D'Albertis also gives a 

 similar description of the formation of Yule Island, and men- 

 tions the occurrence of basaltic trap in the valleys, and that the 

 higher portions of the hills, which attain a height of 700 or 800 

 feet above sea level, are composed of coralline limestone. It is 

 worthy of remark that in Victoria the Miocene strata occur in a 

 similar manner — yellow and blue calcareous clays full of fossil 

 shells, overlaid by thick beds of coralline limestone consisting of 

 an aggregate of comminuted fragments of corals, shells and 

 echinoderms. 



The discovery of these Miocene beds on the southern coast of 

 New Guinea is one of considerable importance. Their occur- 

 rence, I believe, suggests the former land-connection of New 

 Guinea with the Australian continent, and this belief is further 

 borne out by the fact of the shallowness of the intervening sea. 

 I am not aware that any Miocene rocks have yet been identified 

 as such on the northern coast of the Cape York Peninsula ; but 

 it is not improbable that the ferruginous sandstone described by 

 Mr. Macleay as overlying the porphyritic granite at Cape York, 

 and perhaps other Tertiary deposits which may occur in that 

 locality, may be correlated with the Miocene beds on the oppo- 

 site coast of New Guinea. 



Wallace, referring to this subject in his very interesting and 

 valuable work, The Malay Archipelago, says : — il It is interest- 

 ing to observe among the islands themselves how a shallow sea 

 always intimates a recent land-connection." . . . " We find 

 that all the islands from Celebes and Lombock eastward exhibit 



