THE VICTORIAN NATURALIST 121 
Some of it has, however, a different origin, as at Dergholm and 
the surrounding area, where it arises from the decomposition of a 
very coarse granite, bosses of which are in many places still left 
standing. But this sand does not run in lines at all, but extends 
rather in great patches, often of considerable extent ; moreover, it 
has a different appearance, and when examined is seen to contain 
somewhat large rounded grains of felspar (orthoclase). It does not 
produce such a hopelessly barren soil as that found in the long, 
parallel belts of Lowan, and the vegetation is consequently some- 
what superior. 
Again, in the southern parts of Follett and Normanby, true sea 
sand is met with, the origin of which may be distinctly traced to 
agencies now in operation on the sea shore, where great quantities 
of sand have been drifted up by the waves of the Southern Ocean, 
forming sand dunes all along the coast. By the gradual upheaval 
of the land in the south of Victoria (which is still in progress), 
successive lines of these dunes have been left, and are traceable still 
for many miles from the present coast line This sand is of a 
highly calcareous nature, consisting largely of broken shells, and it 
is thus much more fertile than the sand of the more northern areas. 
The three classes of sand which I have mentioned, are thus 
actually in different parts of Western Victoria, but as the regions 
in which they severally occur are almost continuous, they have been 
confounded by the casual observer, and the mistake made of assign- 
ing to them a similarity of origin. <A few feet below the calcareous 
sand, limestone may almost always be found, but in the Lowan 
belts this is never the case, while in the Dergholm district, granitic 
rocks are seldom far away. 
The description of these sandy beds does not of course belong to 
the subject of this chapter, but it was necessary to refer to the 
Lowan belts, when discussing the Grampian sandstones; the other 
recent deposits alluded to will be more fully described later on. 
In a few places, the Grampian sandstones are associated with 
basaltic rocks, but except in one locality without suffering any 
alteration. This one exception is, however, such a geological 
curiosity as to merit special notice. 
On the road from Mooree to the Koolomert home station, and 
near the sandstone bluff before mentioned, a quarry has been 
opened on the side of a steep hill, and though the rock is simply a 
coarse, granular sandstone, it is everywhere prismatic. The rock 
has not been at all hardened or altered in any way, and with the 
exception of its prismatic outlines, exactly resembles the ordinary 
sandstones of the Grampian series. 
The prisms, which vary from one to eight inches in diameter, 
are four, five, and sometimes six sided, and as regularly shaped as 
if they had been dressed by the stonemason’s chisel. They stand 
