Cbe Uktorian naturalist 



Vol. XXXIV.— No. 10. FEBRUARY 7, 1918. No. 410. 



FIELD NATURALISTS' CLUB OF VICTORIA. 



The ordinary monthly meeting of the Club was held at the 

 Royal Society's Hall on Monday evening, 14th January, igiS. 



[The report of the meeting will appear in the March Naturalist. 

 — Ed. Vict. Nat.] 



EXCURSION TO RICKETT'S POINT (BEAUMARIS). 



A GOOD party assembled for the excursion to Beaumaris on 

 Saturday, loth November, where it was proposed to study 

 geology and shore-life, but a stray nail, which punctured the 

 tyre of the car that was to take us to Beaumaris, was the 

 determining factor in fixing Rickett's Point as our ground for 

 stud}'. Arriving on the spot in relays, the portion of the 

 excursionists who decided for geology were soon interested in 

 the rocks of this part of the Bay. The indentations of the 

 shore-line, due to the synclines of soft sandy marl, and the 

 corresponding iron-sand reefs of the gentle anticlines, were 

 noticed, which give so much variety and picturesqueness to the 

 Black Rock district. In the ironstone were seen the remains 

 of probable sand-loving trees and their fruits, the rough bark 

 in some cases being faithfully pseudomorphosed. Al:>ove the 

 terrestrial and littoral ironstone at this spot lies tJie marly 

 sand, in which occasional marine shells occur, thus pointing to 

 several changes of level wthin a short geological period —the 

 Kalimnan. A microscope was put at the disposal of observers, 

 and, whilst examining some sand from a rock pool, a veritable 

 " living fossil " — an ostracod — was seen groping its way 

 amongst the marine debris. This particular crustacean belongs 

 to the genus Cythere, and, as ('. canaliciilata, was named by 

 Reuss from a Miocene fossil which he found in the Vienna 

 I>asin. It migrated in that perif)d to Australian seas, since it 

 H f(jund in the Mioc(;nc of the Mallec i)ores, and tiuis lays 

 ckiim to being quite an old colonist. It still lived on in Scot- 

 land till Pleistocene times, and is now jjractically confined to 

 the Australian coast, being very common in Hobson's Bay and 

 Port Phillip, and found also in Bass Strait and off Western 

 Australia.* The valves of this species are easily distinguished 

 1)y the deeply impressed canals marking the surface of the 



*Sce "Proc. R. Soc. Vict.," vol. xxvii., N.S., part i, 1914, p. J2, pi. vi., 

 fig. 8. 



