440 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION C. 
9.—NOTES ON AN ANNELID FORMATION 
IN QUEENSLAND. 
By James SMITH. 
[ Abstract. | 
I DESIRE to draw attention to a discovery of fossil annelids near 
Rockhampton, in Queensland. Argillaceous shales which, so far 
as I am aware, are azoic, occur at intervals from Broad Sound to 
Brisbane, and from the islands in the sea at Emu Park on to the 
Dawson River. They are interrupted by layers of basalt, which 
appear to have come to the surface through weak points in the 
shales, and to have partly overflown them. The Fenestella and 
annelid beds were, I think, laid unconformably upon them. The 
entirely different composition, the unique character of the enclosed 
fossils, the opposing dip and the altered slope in the short distance 
warrant, I think, the supposition of unconformability, though 
the junction is not absolutely seen. 
The annelids also are found lying loose in little slabs all over 
the country, and away in the upper reaches of the Fitzroy, over 
a country one hundred square miles in extent. The one drawn 
by Mr. Etheridge was found on the top of the Athelstane Range, 
along with others in my collection. They are got in all the 
neighbouring gullies, and help to macadamise the streets of North 
Rockhampton. They have for the most part been lost to us by 
denudation. 
These annelids seem to have been in solitary possession of the 
sea bed at this point, not a sign of coral, shell, or other form of 
life appears amongst them or in the intervening beds. They 
oceur only in the blue thin beds, made of mud, in which, during 
life, they grovelled and burrowed, disappearing entirely during 
the formation of the hard indurated sandstones, and apparently 
returning some half dozen times at intervals. 
The lowest bed in which they appear is the richest in them, and 
here they attain their maximum size of 12 inches in length and 
4 inch in width (the head and hinder part being wanting). They 
are curved in a serpentine manner. In the higher beds they 
dwindle away to small dimensions, becoming thread-like in size. 
They were distinctly segmented, and supplied with cirri and with 
processes like the legs of centipedes. 
These annelids are not to be confused with another series of 
which I have, at Wilangi, found the tunnels occupied by them 
during life in the upper beds of the desert sandstone (?) These 
tunnels ramify in all directions, and the worms appear to have 
lived in communities, and used the passages in common, just like 
ants in their galleries, 
