Geologii of the Loircr Moorahool. 49 



As a few hundred yards below this cutting there is a long 

 outcrop of limestone marked on the Quai'ter-sheet, 24 N.E., the 

 boundary of which we were now approaching, it was very 

 necessary that clear evidence as to its age should be obtained. 

 This strip of limestone is shown on the map as immediately 

 underlying the Pliocene beds, which are mapped as very 

 thick from here to the viaduct, and though the outcrop is clearly 

 enough shown on the map, yet there was but one small exposure 

 in an old disused quarry, the extent of the bed being indicated 

 by the numerous scattered fragments of limestone at the foot of 

 the escarpment. Owing to the unfortunate system of repre- 

 senting all limestones by a blue colour on the quarter-sheets, no 

 hint of the age of the bed is given, and it is merely shown to 

 underlie the Pliocene deposit. In the outcrop at the quarry 

 we could find no identifiable fossils, a few fragmentary polyzoa 

 and foraminifera being all that we saw. There can, however, be 

 no doubt whatever that the outcrop is part of the same bed as is 

 exposed in the road-cutting just mentioned, and it must conse- 

 quently be referred to Eocene age. 



To the north of this the river skirts the southern boundary of 

 a small area of granite, as shown on the Quarter-sheet. South of 

 the confluence of Sutherland's Creek, which skirts the granite 

 area on its eastern border, a small exposure of limestone is 

 mapped, and is represented as intercalated in Pliocene beds. 

 At the locality indicated we found numerous boulders of white, 

 hard, magnesian limestone strewn about near the foot of the 

 slope, but it appeared not to be fossiliferous, and its original 

 position is not clear. We found none in situ, and it may be 

 merely a decomposition product from the overlying volcanic 

 rock, and perhaps owes its present position to its having rolled 

 down the face of the escarpment. To the south-west of this 

 point, owing to the removal of the volcanic rock by denudation 

 over about a square mile of countiy, a series of beds are brought 

 to view which are mapped as " Older Pliocene." In their upper 

 part they pass under the edges of the basalt plateau, and a 

 couple of railway cuttings through small basaltic outliers show 

 tlae relationship of the two sets of beds very clearly. The basalt 

 cap, as shown in the cuttings, is very thin, nowhere exceeding 

 twenty feet in thickness, and thins out to nothing at the two 



