Art. IX. — Newer Pliocene Strata on the Moorabool 



River. 



By J. F. MULDER. 



(Communicated by J. Dennant, F.G.S., F.C.S.). 

 [Read 10th October, 1901.] 



A paper read by Messrs. Hall and Pritchard in June, 1897, 

 before this Society, was the cause of several excursions to the 

 Moorabool River, in the neighbourhood of the Viaduct, by 

 members of the Geelong Field Naturalists' Club, the object being 

 to find the Miocene outcrop therein described. The search, as 

 we afterwards found, was on the wrong side of the river, but on 

 the opposite, or eastern bank, a new fossil bed was discovered, 

 which is so interesting that I have asked jiermission to bring it 

 under the notice of the Royal Society. This deposit consists of 

 a layer of sandy gravel, about 20 feet thick, directly underlying 

 the basalt which tops the hills on both sides of the river. The 

 gravel bed is nearly on a level with the Viaduct, and is full of 

 calcareous casts of fossils. In the light of Mr. Pritchard's 

 identifications of the fossil casts in the ironstone near at hand, 

 we at first thought the deposit to be a Miocene one, but, as will 

 be shewn presently, this is not the case. To prove definitely 

 whether the shells lie actually under the basalt, or simply rest 

 against it on the side of the hill, we followed the river up for 

 about 40 chains until we cauie to a road running at right angles 

 to the river as well as to the above-mentioned deposit higher up 

 the bank. This road leads right up to the basaltic plain, and, in 

 following it from the river, we first came to rotten limestone 

 with a few fragments of Eocene shells (the basal bed), and on 

 climbing still higher we encountered the continuation of the 

 same gravel bed, with calcareous casts of shells, as that previously 

 mentioned, and with basalt also resting upon it. I obtained 

 photographs of these two sections and shewed them to Mr. T. S. 



