THK VICTORIAN NATURALIST. 43 



Ihis formation reveals three distinct beds of hard, compact limestone, 

 containing numerous impressions of leaves and stems and seed- 

 vessels of plants, for vrhich the minutest detail of structure is most 

 frequently seen. These beds are intercalated by bands of calcareous 

 tufa, gravel, and coarse sandy loam, more or less colored by- 

 ferruginous matter. On one occasion, during one of my many- 

 visits to this quarry, I found some bones in a stratum of incoherent 

 tufa beneath the three beds of compact rock, at a dejDth from the 

 surface of about 40 feet. They -^vere chiefly the bones of birds, 

 much broken, together with those of, it is supposed, the Antechiniis 

 and rat-kangaroo, still living. JiTotwithstanding the great lapse of 

 time since the creatures lived to which the bones belonged, the bones 

 were, to all appearance, as fresh as if the animals had been living 

 only four or five years ago ; a condition which may possibly be due 

 ■to the phosphate of lime of the bones not undergoing any 

 transmutation, owing to their being embedded in a matrix of 

 carbonate of lime. In this deposit the late Morton AUjDort, F.L.S., 

 brought to light a fossil water beetle f DyticusJ, and several larvje 

 of other supposed coleoptera. Although the faunal remains are 

 identified as belonging to existing families, the floral relics, for the 

 most part, it is agreed, are extinct. One of the most numerous leaf 

 impressions, and which is, at the same time, the most beautiful in. 

 form, is allied to the existing Cinnamomum. At the time when 

 this travertine was deposited, the contour of the surrounding country- 

 presented a widely different aspect to what it does at the present day. 

 There was no river Derwent flowing then between countless hills ; 

 for, as the same formation, with its characteristic fossils, exists on 

 the opposite side of the river — a distance of two miles away — it 

 points to a freshwater basin, or lake having existed during the 

 Pliocene epoch, and fed by numerous streams which carried into it 

 the animal and vegetable remains, which we find so beautifully- 

 preserved. The beds of travertine have been dislocated and tilted 

 at various angles by the subsequent irruption of basalt, a dyke of 

 which intervenes between the Geilstown Bay beds and the river, and 

 it is, doubtless, to the irruptive forces accompanying this outburst of 

 volcanic rock-matter that the present physical features of the locality- 

 are due. 



Notwithstanding that this Tertiary deposit is, in point of age, an 

 analogue of the bone-bearing travertines near Geelong, and 

 elsewhere in Victoria, it, unlike them, does not furnish any vestiges 

 of extinct forms of mammalian life. This fact invites much earnest 

 enquiry as to the probable cause, when it is considered that at this 

 period Tasmania and the Australian mainland, New Guinea, and as 

 many with good reason contend, New Zealand, were one continuous 

 ■stretch of land. Victoria has its living Phascolarcios, or native 

 bear, and its Dingo ; but no traces of these animals having existed 

 in Tasmania have been discovered. 



