INAUGURAL ADDRESS. / 



columnar basalt, and the occurrence of granite and primitive rocks 

 is itientioned as forming the basis of the more jutting points and 

 masses on the coastline and islands. 



Bailly described the geology about Sydney as consisting first 

 of the Sydney sandstone, which is noted as extending from the 

 seaboard to the escarpment of the Blue Mountains ; secondly, 

 about Paramatta, of bituminous shales, fiill of plant impressions, 

 chiefly ferns, disposed in horizontal layers alternating with sand- 

 stones and conglomerates. He ventured to jiredict the occurrence 

 of coal similar to that to the north and south of Sydney at no 

 great depth. He inferred the existence of a granitic or primitive 

 base somewhere within the basin of the Hawkesbury River from 

 the presence of pebbles of these rocks in the bed of the river at 

 Richmond Hill. He discovered kerosene shale at the foot of the 

 Blue Mountains, afterwards, but elsewhere, observed by P. Cun- 

 ningham in 1827, and rediscovered by Strzelecki in 1845. 



Few geologists have been more in advance of the age in which 

 the}- lived, or have suffered so long an undeserved oblivion, as 

 Peron. 



After the termination of the survey by Flinders, through the loss 

 of his ship and subsequent detention by the French, in the which 

 France was the first to debase as she was the first to promulgate 

 that principal axiom of international law, " Causa scientiarum, 

 causa populorum,^^ twelve years elapsed before England's atten- 

 tion was diverted from the battlefield to geographic discoveries 

 in Australia, and Captain King was appointed to complete the 

 coast surveys left unfinished by Flinders, which occupied him 

 from 1818 to 1822. King could spare but little time to land, 

 and, with few exceptions, merely traced the coast. The paucity of 

 geological information is thus accounted for, and the few refer- 

 ences are merely lithological. Owing to Captain King's own love 

 for natural history, and the encouragement he consequently gave 

 to the botanist, Allan Cunningham, who accompanied him, his 

 surveys were the means of adding very largely to our knowledge 

 of the vegetable and animal life of Australia, especially of the 

 tropical parts. All the geological observations he was able to make, 

 as well as those by Robert Brown when with Flinders, were 

 excellently digested by Dr. Fitton, in a general resume appended 

 to an account of the voyage.* 



OxLEY, John, Surveyor-General, to whom we owe the earliest 

 topographical map of New South Wales, took charge, in 1817, of 



* Narrative ol a Survey of the Intertiopical and Western Coasts of Australia, 2 vols. 1826 



