TEAKSACTIONS OF SECTION C. 643 



(Dunn, 'Report,' 1886, p. 11). Mr. Dunn has ventured to predicate thicker coal- 

 beds in the interior of this great central basin of the Cape Colony region, and has 

 recommended that borings be made at certain places south of Hope Town. 



Carboniferous (Palceozoic) Socks in Cape Colony. — Fossils belonging- to real old 

 Carboniferous species have been found at the Kowie mouth (by Mr. Neate, at Port 

 Alfred) and by Mr. Wylie and Dr. Rubidge and others in the Swellendam district ; 

 but although the Wittebergen at the Cape and the Zuurbergen in Albany contain 

 rocks probably of Carboniferous age, no coal-beds have yet been noted there. 



Lignite in the Cape Flats, and Peat at the western foot of the Draakensberg in 

 Orange Free State, remain only to be alluded to. 



5. 0)1 the Kerosine Shale of Mount Victoria, New South Wales. 

 By Professor W. Boyd Dawkins, F.B.S. 



The kerosene or paraffin shale of New South Wales, so valuable for its laro-e 

 yield of good hydrocarbons, occurs in the area of the Blue Mountains, where I ex- 

 amined it in 1875 iu the Carboniferous strata under very much the same conditions 

 as seams of coal ; it passes on the one hand into a ' bituminous ' shale, and on the 

 other insensibly into coal. The Mount Victoria seam, ranging from twelve to 

 eighteen inches in thickness, and with a shale roof and floor, passes westwards into 

 a valuable deposit at Hartley Vale, thirty-eight inches in thickness, and still 

 further to the west, at Piper's Flat Creek, is represented by a layer eight inches in 

 thickness embedded in a coal seam, twenty- four inches of splint coal beino- above 

 and sixteen inches of dull coal below. Ic is therefore lenticular, like the cannel 

 coal of the Lancashire coalfield. 



Under the microscope it presents a finely granular mass of fossil resins embedded 

 in a meshwork of clayey material, the former being composed in part of obscure 

 broken-down spores, and the latter apparently of a mud deposited from muddy 

 water at the time of the deposition of the former. 



The two are so intimately associated that the ash maintains the same shape and 

 almost the same size as the shale before burning ; the resinous element has probably 

 been deposited by muddy water in basins existing in the Carboniferous forests, and 

 its association with the coals can only be accounted for on that hypothesis, which 

 also will account for its gradual passage into shale. In the associated blue shales 

 Glossojjteris and Vertebraria are the two predominant forms, but there are also 

 forms undistinguishable from Calamites and Lepidodendron, both of which, as well 

 as Si(/illaria and Stiffmaria, have been obtained from the New South AVales coal- 

 field "by the late Rev. W. B. Clarke. 



6. On the Character and Age of the New Zealand Coalfields. 

 By Sir Julius von Haast, K.C.M.G., F.B.S. , F.G.S. 



The coal of New Zealand is of Cretaceous or Tertiary age. Recent researches 

 by von Ettingshausen on the fossil flora lead to the conclusion that the coals of 

 the Grey, BuUer, Pakawau, and Wangapeka Beds should be classed with the 

 Cretaceous; the rest — Shag Point, Malvern Hills, &c. — as true Tertiary. The 

 Cretaceous coals are bituminous and of excellent quality; they occur in beds 

 varying from 8 to 50 feet in thickness. The rocks have been much disturbed and 

 faulted, and the coals range from 600 feet below the sea to nearly 4,000 feet above 

 it. The Tertiary coals vary in character. In the Malvern Hills are found all 

 varieties, from brown coal to good anthracite. In some cases, of thick seams capped 

 by basalt, the upper part is anthracite, the lower part brown coal. 



The development of the coal resources is proceeding rapidly, the output having 

 increased from 162,218 tons iu 1878 to 480,831 tons in 1884, whilst the amount 

 imported has decreased. 



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