196 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION C. 



Section C— GEOLOGY. 



President of the Section, Robert Logan Jack, Esq., F.R.G.S., F.G.S., 

 Government Geologist, Queensland. 



Wednesday, August 29. 



The President delivered the following Address : — 



ON SOME SALIENT POINTS IN THE GEOLOGY OF 

 QUEENSLAND. 



In bidding you welcome to Section C, I must express my own 

 gratification in being called upon to preside over such a large and 

 representative meeting of Australasian geologists, and in seeing, 

 for the first time, so many whose names and works have long 

 been familiar. It is, I believe, with a due appreciation of the 

 economy of force effected by such gatherings as this that we 

 approach the task of consolidating and recording the results of 

 the work done in tlie past, and the still graver task of estimating 

 what remains to be done. Following the precedents of the British 

 Association, let me direct your attention to a branch of our 

 science which has come directly under my own observation — the 

 Geology of Queensland, as it appears to the eye of a field geologist. 



So much is still unsettled as to the exact age of Queensland 

 formations, that I think it advisable to retain for a little longer 

 the system of using for the latter local terms, such as " Burdekin 

 Formation," although older Geological Surveys, such as that of 

 New Zealand, have happily reached the stage of employing 

 such terms to " series" or " beds" — parts of formations bearing 

 the names of the localities where the most typical of the first 

 observed sections have been found. In comparing these locally 

 named formations with others in European lands, I hope I shall 

 not be understood to imply contemporaneity or anything more 

 than homotaxical relationship. 



At the very outset we are sti'uck by the meagreness of the 

 evidence in favour of the existence of the older Palseozoic rocks. 

 There are two, and only two recorded observations in which the 

 question is aflected by palacntological evidence. The late Mr. 



