The greater opportunities to examine the immediate 

 features of one's own neighbourhood, to some extent, deter- 

 mine the direction of our studies in any branch of natural 

 history, and thus, perhaps, my residence for ten years in 

 Launceston — itself cradled in the undulations of an old 

 tertiary mudbank — may have had something to do with my 

 choice of a subject for this evening. 



Many present may have noticed along the shores of the 

 Derwent, particularly in the neighbourhood of Sandy Bay, 

 One Tree Point, and Cornelian Bay, a series of sandy and 

 clayey beds sometimes of considerable thickness and extent. 



They frequently dip irregularly at various angles, and in 

 various directions, as if they had been much disturbed sub- 

 sequent to their deposition, but they are never found at an 

 altitude of much more than 40 feet above the existing sea 

 level. 



The sandy portions, in some places, may readily be mis- 

 taken for members of the older or primary rocks, but they 

 are invariably closely associated with thinly-bedded clays -- 

 white, yellow, and grey, — and they are coarsely granular and 

 irregularly bedded. 



The clays, on the contrary, are generally most regularly 

 and thinly bedded like the sheets of a huge volume. Now if 

 we examine any one of these beds a little more closely, we 

 may discern that it is in turn composed of innumerable filmy 

 leaves, finer than the most delicately prepared paper, all in 

 the plane of the lines of bedding. I have purposely drawn 

 the parallel with a book, for, like it, each of the clayey pages 

 are crowded with characters — Nature's own handwriting, 

 telHng many an interesting story of the times when they 

 were impressed and deposited beneath the waters of this 

 ancient lake ; while the rifts, contortions, crinklings, over- 

 lying rocks and drifts, and the waste of the ever encroaching 

 sea, tell of the vicissitudes to which the beds have been sub- 

 jected subsequently. Since my recent arrival here, I have 

 spent much time in studying their characters, and I have 

 carefully traced their extent by inspecting every foot of 

 coast line, watercourse, railway and road cuttings, and 

 natural faces exposed, within a seven mile radius of this 

 City. My acquaintance with the " solitary patch of lime- 

 stone " at Geilston, which is still quarried by Mr. Albury, 

 and of the old limestone quarry at the head of Burnett-street, 

 to which I was at one time guided by Mr. Ltgrand, enabled 

 me to decipher their signs more readily. 



Indeed many of the characters of the leaf and fruit remains, 

 are identical with those found so abundantly in similar 

 lacustrine formations throughout Australia and Tasmania, the 

 relations of which with the Geilston Travertin I have already 



