248 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



to 7 feet ; vesicular and amygdaloidal basalt, much decomposed, 

 8 to 12 feet, not penetrated in the floor of the cutting. The 

 shells in the black clay were apparently all of lamellibranchs, but 

 were so much broken up that those sufficiently preserved to allow 

 of a hope of identification were very few. A small collection of 

 the material was made from several portions, but it has unfor 

 tunately been mislaid. I regard this bed, however, as distinct 

 from the shelly marl, and it directly overlies the basalt in one 

 place. It may l)e the littoral portion of the estuarine deposit of 

 which the shelly marl forms that laid down in deeper water. 

 The greenish-grey clay extends only partly across the cutting, 

 and the cylindrical bodies in it were probably worm burrows 

 which were filled up with the overlying material. 



In a section right at the end of the cutting (Section B), and 

 about 4 feet from the river's edge, the strata showed as alluvium 

 2 to 3 feet ; black fissile clay with fragments of the same kinds of 

 shells as in the preceding section, not in distinct layers, but dis- 

 tributed through the clay except at the south end where they 

 occur as a distinct layer lying on the sandy clay, 5 feet ; yellowish 

 sandy clay, 10 feet thinning to 5 feet going south; ferruginous 

 quartz grit, 9 inches; ferruginous cemented conglomerate con- 

 taining pebbles of quartz, sandstones, shales and basalt, 4 inches 

 to 1ft. 6in.; basalt varying from o feet to 10ft. 6in., thinning 

 towards the south. The conglomerate occurs as patches or thin 

 bands and lies in eroded hollows of the basalt. 



A small bed, 6 inches thick, of clayey gravel of quartz, shales 

 and sandstones underlying bluish-black clay occurred about 50 

 yards from the east end of the cutting. It was 2 feet above the 

 floor of the cutting and on the river (soutli) side of it. 



From these sections it will be noticed that the shelly marl 

 does not show in this north cutting for more than half way from 

 the western end and it appears to trend in an oblique (S.E.) 

 direction across it. This points towards the assumption that the 

 cutting at its eastern end runs through the margin of the old 

 estuary. 



South of the Yarra the cutting was made through the corner 

 of the Botanical Gardens and extended across the foot of 

 Anderson Street until it met the river again G chains to the east. 

 No basalt was met with in any part of this cutting, though 



