Miscellaneous. 191 



The fossils from Hall's Sound arc unfortunately not in a good state 

 of preservation, being mostly imperfect casts ; but amongst them 

 appear to be the following: — 



Voluta macroptera (a small specimen), Voluta anticingulata, Ostrea, 

 Cythercea, Crassatella (?), Pecten, Turritella, Natica, Triton (?), Do- 

 lium(?), Astarte, Corbida, Leda, Venus, Ci/prcea, two Echinoderms. 



Most of the above I have found in the Victorian beds ; and two of 

 them have been figured and described by Prof. M'Coy in his Decade 

 No. 1 of the ' PaliEontology of Victoria.' 



The small specimen of calcareous clay from the Katau river, on 

 the west side of the Gulf of Papua, contains only a few broken frag- 

 ments of shells ; but it appears to be of the same formation as the 

 clay beds of Hall's Sound or Vule Island. 



The Oolitic limestone of Bramble Cay I believe to be also of the 

 upper beds of this Miocene formation. 



Mr. Macleay, in his letter to the ' Sydney Morning Herald ' of 

 October 11, 1875, describes the formation of Yule Island as a sedi- 

 mentary rock, nearly horizontal on the sea-face, but with a great dip 

 inwards. The rock itself is calcareous, and composed of corals, 

 fihells, Echini, &c.. — in fact a concrete of fossils resembling the Coral- 

 rag of Oxford. 'Mr. D'Albertis also gives a similar description of 

 the formation of Yule Island, and mentions the occurrence of basaltic 

 trap in the valleys, and that the higher portion of the hills (which 

 attain a height of 700 or 800 feet above the sea-level) are composed 

 of coralline limestone. It is worthy of remark that in Victoria the 

 Miocene strata occur in a similar manner — yellow and blue calca- 

 reous clays full of fossil shells, overlain by thick beds of coralline 

 limestone consisting of an aggregate of comminuted fragments 

 of corals, shells, and echinoderms. 



The discovery of these Miocene beds on the southern coast of New 

 Guinea is one of considerable importance. Their occurrence, I 

 believe, suggests the former land-connexion of New Guinea with 

 the Australian continent ; and this belief is further borne out by the 

 fact of the shallowness of the intervening sea. I am not aware that 

 any Miocene rocks have yet been identified as such on the northern 

 coast of the Cape- York peninsula ; but it is not improbable that the 

 ferruginous sandstone described by Mr. Macleay as overlying the 

 porphyritic granite at Cape York, and perhaps other Tertiary deposits 

 which may occur in that locality, may be correlated with the Miocene 

 beds on the opposite coast of New Guinea. 



Wallace, referring to this subject in his very interesting and 

 valuable work ' The Malay Archipelago,' says : — " It is interesting 

 to observe among the islands themselves how a shallow sea always 



intimates a recent land-connexion We find that all the islands 



from Celebes and Lombock eastward exhibit almost as close a 

 resemblance to Australia and New Guinea as the western islands do 

 to Asia." And again : — " Australia, with its dry winds, its open 

 plains, its stony deserts, and its temperate climate, produces birds 

 and quadrupeds which are closely related to those inhabiting the hot 



