BY THE REV. W. B. CLARKE, M.A., F.G.S., &c. 287 



diffused, for anthracite occurs in the European Alps where there 

 is no direct contact with igneous rocks, and such heat, therefore, 

 was probably due to the inherent temperature brought up from 

 below when the Alps were elevated. 



There is one character assumed by granitic and trappean 

 rocks, and also by coal and other transmuted deposits, which 

 ought to be mentioned. I mean the spheroidal form. 



Basalte en boules is a common geological expression ; the 

 concentric layers exfoliate like the coats of an onion, as in this 

 specimen from Launceston, in Tasmania. The same structure 

 occurs in certain coals at Newcastle and in India. 



It also occurs in sandstones, as at Five Dock, near Sydney, 

 where a hard concretion is surrounded by successive layers of 

 softer rock. 



It is transmutation allied to prismatisation, and in fact 

 columns of basalt are explained as originating from the juxta- 

 position and mutual pressure of spheroidal masses. 



In this colony and in Tasmania I have found this structure 

 very common in the middle and lower Carboniferous rocks. At 

 Woollamboola Lagoon, Jervis Bay, and about Wollongong and 

 to the north of it, the beach rocks which are full of fossils are 

 studded with round balls of calcareous matter often containing a 

 shell or coral. 



On the Hunter, as near Glendon, these spheroids are of 

 immense size and line the left bank of the river for some distance. 

 In the Jervis Bay district, as you will see by these examples, 

 shells have been twisted out of their proper bedding and now 

 appear outside the ball. Similar instances occur in the white 

 limestone of Balme in France, where siliceous balls with silicified 

 Terabratulse occur. 



Chemouset adopts the same view as myself, viz., that when 

 the Terabratulee were deposited, the balls did not exist. 



Other kinds of transmutation occur. Thus the coal near 

 Swansea, in Glamorganshire, has in one place been formed 

 through the agency of a vein of sulphuret of iron, or in common 

 with its occurrence, not in columns or spheroids, but in a series 

 of cones or conical sections of a spheroid. 



In some parts of the lower Carboniferous formation of New 



