278 



NA TURE 



[January i8, 1894 



that by the French under Baudin. The scientific f qaipment 

 was unrivalled in the annals of Australian exploration. To 

 Depuch and Bailly were entrusted the mineralogical and geo- 

 logical researche'^. The former left the ship at Sydney to return 

 to Europe, but he died at Mauritius, and his manuscripts, which 

 he had taken with him, and were to serve for a geological his- 

 tory of New Holland, were irrecoverably lost. Peron was the 

 senior zoologist, and the author of the narrative of 

 the expedition. Peron s account of the physiography and 

 geology of the places visited is not only graphic but rich 

 in details ; he closely investigated the nature and origin 

 of the /Eolian calciferous sandstones, and fully recognised their 

 relationship to the blown-sand of the dunes. The entombed 

 calcifierj shapes of bianches and stems of trees were correctly 

 recognised, though Vancouver and Flinders had erroneously 

 considered them as coral reefs. He rightly referred the funda- 

 mental rocks of Kangaroo and King Islands to different kinds 

 of primitive schists, and the superimposed fos.-iiiferous lime- 

 stone at the former place was correctly observed, though not 

 at tributed to any particular epoch. The occurrence of corals and 

 marine shells of recent apearance at considerable elevations on 

 the coast was justly regarded by him as demonstrating the 

 " former abode of the sea" above the land, and very naUirally 

 suggested an inquiry as to the nature of the evolutions to which 

 this change of situation is to be ascribed. Few geologists have 

 been more in advance of the age in which they 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 subiequent detention by the French, in which France 

 was the first to debase, as she was the first to promulgate, that 

 principal axiom of international law, "Causa scientiarum, 

 causa populorum " (the cause of science is the cause of the 

 people), twelve years elapsed before England's attention wa; 

 diverted from the battle- field to geographical discoveries in Aus- 

 tralia by the appointment of Captain King 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 

 references are merely lithological. John Oxley, Surveyor- 

 General, to whom we owe the earliest topographical map of 

 New South Wales, took charge in 1817 of an expedition to 

 ascertain the character of the western interior, a practicable 

 route across the Blue Mountains having been opened in 1815. 

 He traced the Lachlan down to longitude 144', and completed 

 the discovery of the Blue Mountains, which constitute the pro- 

 minent physiographic feature of New South Wales. In 1818 

 he traced the Macquarie River to its junction with the Darling. 

 In the volume of his narrative are brief references to the 

 occurrences of different rocks, amongst which the more 

 noteworthy are coal at Port Macquarie Harbour, coal 

 indications at the head of the Macleay River, and lime- 

 stone at Limestone Creek on the Lachlan, and at 

 Wellington Valley on the Macquarie, " which is the first that 

 has hitherto been discovered in Australia." The geological 

 specimens which were collected during the two expeditions were 

 reported on by Dean Buckland as affording indications of 

 primitive rocks (granite, mica, slate, clay-slate, and serpentine), 

 trap, and limestone (resembling the transition limestone of 

 England), as also those gathered by Robert Brown on the Hun- 

 ter River, which are described as coal and shale with plant im- 

 pressions, and the author states that there is analogy between 

 the coal formation of the Hunter River and that of England, 

 whilst certain fossiliferous rocks from Hobart are nearly, if not 

 quite, identical with those of the mountain limestone of England 

 and Ireland. This is the first application of palaeontology to the 

 stratigraphical chronology of the Australian rocks, and a suc- 

 cessful one, as the positions assigned by Buckland to the two 

 formations are substantially those accepted by the local geologists 

 of to-day. Scott (Rev. Archdeacon) refers to the strata of the 

 Newcastle coalfield as the " coal formation," and to the lime- 

 stone as resembling in the character of its organic remains the 

 "mountain limestone" of England, and thus independently 

 arrived at the same conclusions as Buckland. 



Jesson, the naturalist to the French surveying ship,Z^a CoquiUe, 

 and author of the history of the voyage during the years 

 1S22-25, describes the geological features about Port Jackson. 

 His arrangement is a great advance on prior contributions, as 

 it establishes a definite successional order of deposits, and for 

 the first time, though foreshadowed by his countryman Bailly, 



NO. 1264, VOL 49] 



the superposition of the Sydney sandstone on the coal measure.*, 

 and of the coal measures on the granites, is recognised. Up to 

 this date no described fossil had been referred to as occur- 

 ring in Australian depos-iis, and it was not till 1828 that Alex. 

 Brongniart described Glossopteris browniaua and Pliyllotheca 

 Australis fiom the Newcastle coal measure?. 



Sturt, in 1829, on his passage down the Murray, arrived at 

 Overland Corner, and noted the sudden change from cliffs of 

 sand and clay to fossiliferous limestone, which continued unin- 

 terruptedly to Lake Alexandrina. Sturt referred examples of the 

 fo.-sil mollusca, echinoids, and polyzoa, to species of the Eocene 

 of England, Paris, and Westphalia, and thus established by 

 similarity of organic remains, an old tertiary formation in Aus- 

 tralia. 



Mitchell (Major, afterwards Sir Thomas), in 1832 penetrated 

 north, and reached the River Dailing. His western limit in 1835 

 vvas the i unction of the rivers Bogan and Darling, and the 

 southern, in 1836, was Portland Bay. The chief geological facts 

 recorded by Mitchell are: (i) That the higher ground about 

 the sources of the tiibutary of the Murrumbidgee is composed 

 of granite, on the flanks of which rests a fossiliferous limestone 

 " much re:embling the carboniferous of Europe," and another 

 limestone containing corals belonging to the genus Favosites, 

 and crinoids ; (2) in Victoria, nortli of the divided lange, 

 granites an \ syenites are signalled, and clay slate on the river 

 Campaspe ; (3) the lower part of the Glentlg River and the 

 coast districts as far as Portland Bay are occupied with a fossili- 

 ferous tertiary formation, frequently inteirupttd by trap and 

 vesicular lava ; hills of lava often occur, and one at lea■^t, Mount 

 Napier, is described as still exhibiting a perfect circular crater. 



The paloeontological collections, which were made du'ing 

 Mitchell's three expeditions, were deposited in the British Mu- 

 seum, and reported on by specialists. The results appended to 

 Mitchell's work demonstrated the presence of representatives of 

 the following life epochs : Carboniferous and Mesozoic. The 

 collection included also a portion of the guard of a belemnite 

 obtained near Mount Abundance. Its occurrence is noted on 

 Mitchell's chart, though not referred to in the Ktier-press. 

 This is the first secondary fossil recorded for Australia, though 

 it was not till 1880 that it was brought to scientific notice. 



Diprotodon Period. — The ossiferous caves of the Wellington 

 Valley and at Buree were discovered by Mitchell in 1830, and 

 an account of the survey of them was published in 1831. In 

 1835 more extended researches were undertaken, and the par- 

 ticulars respecting the animal remains then found were supplied 

 by Owen (afterwards Sir Richard), who demonstrated that the 

 existing marsupial fauna was preceded in the same area in later 

 tertiary limes by a similar one, differing specifically for the most 

 part, and to some extent, generically ; some of them presenting 

 colossal forms in comparison with their largest modern repre- 

 sentatives ; such are Diprotodon and Notothtrium. This eaily 

 work of Owen's was only the commencement of those investi- 

 gations which culnrinaied in that monument of marvellous 

 industry and talent, the " Fossil Mammals of Australia." 

 Charles Darwin was naturalist to the surveying ship, the 

 Beagle, on her second voyage, 1832-36. The Beagle, on her 

 homeward passage, called at Sydney and King George's Sound, 

 and the geological observations relating to those places are brief, 

 and, to a large extent, had been anticipated by Mitchell in re- 

 spect of the first, and by Peron as to the second, though in the 

 latterconnection Darwin corrected some of the erroneous observa- 

 tions recorded by Vancouver and Flinders. Lonsdale describes 

 some Australian carboniferous polyzoa, and Sowerby some 

 Spiriferidse, and we have thus another instance nf the early ap- 

 plication of paLieontology to the determination of the correlative 

 age of stratified deposits. 



Lieutenant Grey (now Sir George) was commissioned to 

 explore the coastline between Prince Regent River and Swan 

 River. In 1839 he was shipwrecked in Gantheaume Bay, and 

 his party was forced to make an overland journey to Perth, in 

 the course of which he discovered the Murchison and other 

 rivers, and carboniferous rocks in the Victoria Range. 



Commander Wickham was commissioned in 1S37 to the 

 Beagle s third voyage, but in consequence of his retirement 

 in March, 184 1, owing to ill-health, the command devolved 

 on Captain Stokes, who is the author of the narrative 

 of the six years' voyage. The objects of the survey did not 

 permit of any connected observations of the geological structure 

 of the islands or coast, and though the author disclaims any 

 pretensions to be versed in geological science, yet some of his 



