40 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



pite (?). We have never been able to find any undoubted fossils 

 in the cliffs about here, though we have frequently searched for 

 them. The general appearance and character of the beds 

 resembles that of the marine Eocenes at various localities, and 

 the amount of gypsum present suggests its derivation from 

 calcareous organisms. We see no reason why these beds should 

 not be classed with the blue clays which, in all probability, they 

 succeeded. About a quarter of a mile south of the point men- 

 tioned above, and at which the lignitic conglomerates appear, we 

 find another peculiar section (Fig. 6). The grits and conglomerates 

 can be traced passing under a small mass of basalt, which shows 

 well-developed tabular jointing. The base of the basalt, where it 

 rests on the underlying beds, is vesicular, or rather, amygdaloidal, 

 and becomes denser as we ascend. It abuts against the cliff, 

 which is formed of variegated sands and clays, passing up into 

 ferruginous beds near the top of the cliff. The actual junction of 

 the basalt with the undisturbed strata of the cliff is masked, but 

 the beds can be readily traced along the cliff to the northward, 

 where, as we just stated, they overlie the lignitic series, with no 

 clear break, and without any trace of the basalt being inter- 

 calated between them. In fact, there is no basalt shown along 

 the cliffs, though a couple of islets and a small patch visible 

 on the beach at low water connect the two points, which are 

 preserved by their basaltic sea-fronts. The fact that the lignitic 

 beds underlie the basalt, and can be traced horizontally till they 

 underlie the gypsiferous sandy clays to the north, puts faulting 

 out of the question, though, at first sight, the nearly straight line 

 which the shoreward edge of the basalt shows suggests it. 

 There remain two other possible explanations of the section. 

 One is that we are dealing with a narrow flow of lava which has 

 passed down an eroded valley which cut through the upper sandy 

 beds till the lignitic series was reached. 



The objections to this view are, firstly, that the cliff above the 

 tabular basalt rises steeply, and the bedding is distinct and fairly 

 horizontal, and we cannot suppose such a valley-wall to have 

 persisted in incoherent material from the time when the basalt 

 was poured out, for the basalt precedes the blue Eocene clays with 

 fossils. The other objection is that if, as we suppose, the sandy 



