BY THE REV. W. B. CLARKE, M.A., F.G.S., &c. 305 



Mr. Stutchbury has given a description of the transmutations 

 of Sandstone near the Sappa Bulgas, to which it may be well to 

 refer. The following is an abstract of a part of his Report of 1st 

 July, 1852 : 



" Near Dewembang the sandstone is contorted and prismatised, 

 The columns are not so compact in the interior as on the outside, 

 which is distinctly denned by a double boundary. The strata 

 lines are visible. 



" At Gundi, on the Little River, the sandstone is arched in 

 synclinal and anticlinal curves ; and on Cockabroo Plains it is 

 jasperised and porphyritic, becoming full of nodular concretions 

 of iron ore as near Geary. Five miles from Murrumbidgeree the 

 ground is covered by pebbles of compact hematite, extending for 

 more than a mile. At Cumbogle Combang the sandstone is 

 again prismatised." 



This description does not, however, convey the whole of the 

 facts. The sandstones have been converted into a homogeneous 

 flint or chert by the fusion of the pebbles and sand into one 

 compact mass. All kinds of suppositions have been adduced to 

 account for similar changes in the coal-fields, and in such fused 

 conglomerates as exist at Merton, on the Hunter, and boiling 

 water has been called in to explain them. 



Now, in Tasmania the identical changes have been produced in 

 sandstone similar to that which occurs on Cooper's Creek, at the 

 Sappa Bulgas, and elsewhere ; and there is no doubt whatever, that 

 in the localities about Green Ponds, which I have most carefully 

 studied, the cause of change is to be traced to greenstone and basalt. 



Not only at Green Ponds, but at Picton, and still further to 

 the north, near Spring Hill, the igneous rock is in direct contact 

 with the transmuted semi- vitrified sandstone ; and if the specimens 

 here present from the Sappa Bulgas and Picton be compared, no 

 absolute difference can be discovered. I have selected portions 

 of transmuted rocks which show in each a border of the unchanged 

 rock. The rock is prismatised as well as vitrified, and it is 

 capable of such clean cleavage that it might be chipped into the 

 form of the arrow heads and flint instruments used by the 

 aborigines of Europe, just as similar spear heads are used by the 

 Australian aborigines. 



