NOTES ON A COLLECTION OF TERTIARY LIMESTONES 
AND THEIR FOSSIL CONTENTS, FROM KING ISLAND. 
By Frederick Chapman, A.L.S., F.R.M.S., Paleontologist to the 
National Museum, Melbourne. 
(Plates VI., VII.) 
IntTRoDUCTORY REMARKS. 
The samples of limestone and limestone-fossils herein described 
were collected by Mr. J. A. Kershaw, F.E.S., whilst on a recent 
exploring trip to King Island. Mr. Kershaw informs me that he 
found this limestone cropping out on the extreme south-east part 
of the island, and well exposed in the river bed and banks of 
the Seal River. The outcrop showed a vertical thickness of about 
25 feet. The limestone in places was very hard, and the horizontal 
bedding could be clearly seen on account of the weathering of the 
softer layers; the more compact limestones projecting as ledges. 
The polyzoal rock with pectens was found outcropping at the sur- 
face of the upper levels. In the absence of any further note as to 
the relation of the hard limestone to the polyzoal rock, it may be 
inferred that the latter overlies the hard limestone; and, if this be 
the case, we have a similar sequence to that of the polyzoal rock of 
the Grange Burn, which is underlain by the hard pmk limestone 
cropping out at the junction of Grange Burn and Muddy Creek. 
The present collection does not comprise many determinable 
fossils, but, nevertheless, is of great interest, for although several 
outcrops of tertiary limestone have already been reported from King 
Island,* no fossils seem to have been collected. 
Prof. Baldwin Spencer, in his report on the general results of 
the expedition to that locality in 1887,{ states that the limestone 
“lies directly upon the granite, and is widely distributed. Thus 
it was cut through (though the depth of the bed was not recorded) 
in laying the foundation for the Wickham lighthouse before the 
grey granite was reached. Again, an outcrop occurs half way from 
here to Yellow Rock, and on the east coast one a little south of 
Lavinia Point, and another at the Blow-hole Creek. On the west 
it is well marked on the coast between the Pass and Ettrick Rivers, 
inland near Porky Lagoon, and again forms an extensive formation 
* See “ Expedition to King Island, November, 1887.""—Vict. Nat., vol. iv., Jan., 1888. 
+ Since writing the above and following account of the fossils (May, 1909), I have seen a 
paper by Mr. F. Debenham, B.A., entitled ‘‘Notes on the Geology of King Island, Bass 
Straits.”—Proc. R. Soc. N. 8. Wales, vol. xliv., 1910, pp. 560-576. That author describes 
therein this same Tertiary limestone of the Seal River, and reeords Pecten aff. antiaustralis, 
Tate; Lima cf. bassi, T. Woods; Hipponyz cf. australis; Turritella sp., (7) Hemithyris, and 
a, These determinations were made by Mr. W. 8. Dun, F.G.S., who regards this lime- 
stone (and rightly so from the present examination) as belonging to the Table Cape Series. 
t Loc. supra cit., p. 163. 
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