THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 21 



By Mr. G. A. Keartland. — White-fronted Storm-Petrel, caught 

 alive in a store at West Melbourne. 



By Mr. A. Mattingley. — Aboriginal sharpening-stone from 

 Bunyip, Gippsland. 



By Mr. F. P. Spry. — Life-history of moth, Pinara fervens, 

 Walk., collected near Melbourne. 



After the usual conversazione the meetins: terminated. 



EXCURSION TO ROYAL PARK. 

 About a dozen members attended the excursion to Royal Park 

 on Saturday, 8th April, for the purpose of examining the railway 

 cutting near Flemington Bridge. The upper series of beds, 

 consisting of red clays, sands, and gravels, was seen to have been 

 laid down by water action, and to represent merely the harder 

 residues or " concentrates " of a large mass of original rock. The 

 finer material had been removed by the agitated water, and could 

 only have been deposited in some other locality where there was 

 comparative calm. A i^w fossils picked out of these red-beds 

 were evidently cones and cowries, and showed that the beds 

 were of marine origin. Under the red-beds is a thick mass of 

 clay, with a very uneven surface, and of variable colour and 

 structure. This clay was carefully examined, beginning at the 

 north end of the cutting. As we went south rust-coloured rings, 

 at times in concentric groups, and ranging from feet to inches 

 in diameter, were met with. Many of these were barely 

 distinguishable from the grey and white finely-mottled clay ; others 

 were very plain. Then examples were seen in which the rings 

 were seen to be the cut edges of a series of concentric shells. 

 Then, by further successive steps, there was found a mass of hard 

 bluestone or basalt in the middle of one lump, while the 

 boundaries of the lump gradually faded off into the clay. Thus 

 it was seen that bluestone, under the influence of weather, changes 

 into a soft clay with a greasy feel like fuller's-earth. 



After a glance at the small outcrop of Silurian bed-rock visible 

 in the cutting, the valley of the Moonee Ponds Creek was briefly 

 examined. The valley floor is flat, being filled in with river-silt, 

 or rather there are two flats at diff'erent levels. The lower one is 

 about the present level of the creek, the higher being about 

 twenty feet above it. The lower is so near sea-level that water 

 cannot run off" it very fast, and, consequently, it is scarcely being 

 cut away by the stream, while the upper one is being attacked. 

 Both levels or terraces are the product of river action, and even 

 the upper one was laid down by the stream when moving more 

 slowly than at present. In this locality this can only mean that 

 at that time the top of the terrace was more nearly at sea -level than 

 it is now, or, to put it in popular language, the land has since 

 risen. The amount of the rise is shown by the diff'erence of level 

 of the two river-flats — namely, about twenty feet. About Laverton 



