142 Excursion to Lilydale. [voLXXXli. 



EXCURSION TO LILYDALE. 



The afternoon of Saturday, 27th November, made a bright 

 and favourable break in a chain of showery Saturdays, when 

 a party of fourteen naturalists, armed with nearly as many 

 different kinds of hammers, walked from Lilydale station to the 

 fossil quarry on the Mooroolbark road. On the way a rumour 

 was circulated to the effect that a native had declared the 

 distance to the quarry to be five miles ; but it was discovered 

 that the native, as usual, is often the last person that should 

 be appealed to for accurate information of his district, the 

 ai tual distance being under three miles. At the quarry we were 

 joined by three lady members who had arrived by an earlier 

 train, and had kindly prepared the way for refreshment, with 

 which the party was regaled after some serious work of stone- 

 breaking had been carried out. By the kind thought of the 

 ladies the menu was agreeably varied by strawberries and 

 cream, and the afternoon tea seemed to have so braced the 

 energies of several devoted collectors that they could only with 

 t difficulty be persuaded to leave the quarry to the 

 gathering darkness and the local kine : 



" Owre mony a weary ledge they limpit, 

 An' aye the tither stane they thumpit." 



The quarry has been excavated in a dome-shaped anticline 

 of Yeringian mudstone, and the fad that the rocks are here 

 conspicuously folded accounts for the hardness of the material 

 compared with that in quarries not far distant. Hence the 

 u _.. ,,| the rock as a source of road-metal. After the rock- 

 folding had I n place, there Seellls to liave been Some minor 



th oscillations, for the jointed and fractured reel, is, in 

 some bands, composed of small blocks tightly wedged againsl 

 an d into one anoth gesting horizontal movement and 



I he < ollei ting oi fossils proceeded apace, whilst 

 our pond-hunters were also busy sampling the fair-sized pond 

 filling the bottom of the quarry-hole. Anon the monotony 

 oi the hammering was relieved by th< appropriate recital, 



ic poem oi Brei Harte's 

 relative to Brown, the fossil-bone collector. Fossils are 

 plentiful in this quarry, the only fault in the rock being 

 its jointed character] the stone more often breaking 

 fhrough a fossil than otherwise. The leader had a busy time 

 n ing ea< h re< ord of the rocks as it turned up, and many 

 interesting finds were made, the mosl notable being a perfect 

 pygidium of Calyrnene, a beautifully preserved tail and cdunter- 

 |, ;! ,i of the newly-described Goldiui %reenii t and several 

 examples oi the genus Loxonema. Gathering clouds promised 

 very weather, and a southerly chang< of wind was experi- 



