184 THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 



small village of Kilcunda, the site of the coal mine, and after refresh- 

 ment paid a visit to the mine. It lies in a hollow below the 

 village, corresponding to a kind of saddle in the cliff on the coast. 

 Tlie outside of it had the appearance of an ordinary shaft on the 

 gold diggings, with its gaunt poppet head towering aloft, and the 

 engine-house close by for winding and pumping, only in the place 

 of a long yellow hill of mullocli and tailings, tliere were several high 

 mounds of coal, black and glistening, at the pit's mouth, amounting 

 to several thousands of tons, awaiting the means of transit to 

 Melbourne. We went down the shaft which was 100 feet deep, and 

 saw all there was to be seen of the seam of coal, which is two feet 

 thick and considerably faulted, and sloping with the other strata 

 north by east at an angle of about 10°. As fast as the coal is taken 

 out, the gap is filled in the usual way with stones to prevent settle- 

 ment or creeping. 



The only point of interest that I think it worth while to draw 

 your attention to in connection with this mine is that, contrary to 

 wliat I was prepared to expect, the coal seam at Kilcunda had a 

 very distinct underclay of the same thickness as the coal itself, viz., 

 two feet, a small heap of which on the outside of the shaft was one 

 of the first things that drew my attention, and was described to me 

 by the manager as being equal to the best Stourliridge fire-clay of 

 England, ^ow, Mr. Selwyn in his notes on the Geology of 

 Victoria, j)ublished in the Exhibition Catalogue of 1861, p. 19, 

 speaks as follows, in allusion to the patchiness of the Cape Patersou 

 coal seams : — " This is apparently due to the drifted origin of the 

 greater part, if not all, the vegetal 'le matter now f<jrniing the coal. 

 'No 'underclay' is seen, and sandstone or a sandy bed commonly 

 forms both the floor and roof of the seams." You will see from the 

 circumstance of there being no "unlerclay," Mr. Selwyn draws the 

 inference that the coal of the whole district must have been of drift- 

 wood origin, and certainly the tliin seams that we saw cropping out 

 at intervals along the coast beforehand having no underclay, were 

 perhaps of that description, suggesting however to my mhid the idea of 

 segregation. But whatever may be the chnracter of these or other 

 seams at Cape Paterson to which aloTie Mr. Selwyn alludes in 1861, 

 the Kilcunda seam, since discovered, has as distinct and as un- 

 mistakable a stratum of underclay as any English coal field. Now 

 the underclay being generally supposed to be the relic of the original 

 soil on which the coal phints grew, it follows that either the coal 

 vegetation at Kilcunda grew on the spot where the coal is now found, 

 or else that if drifted it must have been by some violent inundation 

 wliich stripped the vegetation off the country where it was growing — 

 subsoil and all — like some of those floating islands we read of in 

 American rivers. After coming up the shaft, we walked to the beach 

 opposite where the coal stratum was cropping out, and again saw the 



