Geology of Castleinaine, &c., with List of Minerals. 50 



Selwyn* and Smythf point out that surrounding the granite 

 area of the district, the indurated silurian rocks usually form a 

 range of steep and rugged hills. It will be noted that the 

 Elphinstone and Big Hill railway tunnels are through these hills, 

 while at Harcourt and near Maiden advantage has iDeen taken 

 of water courses to cross the boundary. 



The rocks consist of slates and sandstones of all varieties of 

 texture. The coarsest grit observed occurs near the head of 

 Victoria Gully about the strike of the Corporation quarry and is 

 exposed in the i"ace. The quartz grains are about an eight of an 

 inch in diameter and well-rounded. A similar grit occurs on the 

 hills north of the head of Moonlight Flat, where it projects like 

 a rampart twenty feet in height, and is traceable for a long 

 distance. A peculiar conglomerate occurs near the seventy-third 

 mile post on the Bendigo railway. It consists of a faiidy fine- 

 grained sandstone, in which are embedded rounded fragments of 

 slate. One of these fragments was seven inches long and one inch 

 thick. A similar rock occurs half a mile nearer Melbourne, and 

 also in the creek cutting above the Francis Ormond Mine, at 

 Chewton. Mr. E. J. Dunn| records a similar rock from Bendigo. 

 A conglomerate, noted by Ulrich, occurs in the Brewery Gully, 

 Maldon. 



Some of the sandstones show a concretionary banded colouring 

 which has a strikingly beautiful appearance. One set of beds of 

 this description crosses the railway line at the Chewton station, 

 being repeated several times by folding, and is traceable north as 

 far as Donkey Gully. The same band recurs in the cutting at 

 Scott's Hill, a mile and a half to the westward, and possibly 

 again in New Chum Gully. Quartzites occur plentifully, usually 

 in rather thin bands, and quartzose rocks which approach 

 them in character, but are ferruginous, are common all over 

 the field. 



The argillaceous rocks are all more or less cleaved, and I have 

 consequently classed them merely as slates. Mica is rarely 

 present in the slates, though fi*equently so in the sandstones, 

 some of the latter being thickly spangled with plates of a whitish 

 variety of that mineral. 



* Pari. Papers, and Geol. Mag., loc. cit. t G. F. an.l Miii. D. Vic, p. 70. 



X Kep. Beiiiligo Goldfic4i], p. 6. 



