412 Notices of Memoirs—Goldfields of Western Australia. 
Plesiarctomys by Paramys; the Huropean Lemurs, Bats, and Insec- 
tivora, for the most part have nearly related representative genera 
in North America, and for the Anoplotheride and Tragulide a sub- 
stitute may be found in the altogether different Leptotragulide. 
The development of the animals on both continents has evidently 
always followed different roads. The connection of the two con- 
tinents appears, indeed, to have been still maintained, but the 
means of communication must have been difficult. 
(Lo be continued in our next Number.) 
NOTICES OF MEMOTRS. 
IJ.—Western Avustratta. Report on THE Murcurson GoOLDFIELD. 
By Harry Pace Woopwarp, F.G.S., etc., Government Geologist. 
8vo. pp. 21. (Perth, 1893.) 
fine goldfield has a proclaimed area of 32,000 square miles. 
The principal auriferous belt is at its eastern side, about 200 
miles from the coast, and has a general N. and S. direction. Other 
rich patches and belts occur further east (probably to a great 
distance), and a few nearer the coast. The metamorphic rocks 
constitute the base of this area, such as slates and schists, talcose, 
hornblendic, and micaceous, besides granite and highly altered 
ferruginous jaspery quartzites. These are traversed by large quartz- 
reefs, which are richest where intersecting the quartzite. There are 
also limestone beds, with veins of ferruginous calcite, bearing some 
gold. These rocks strike a little W. of N., dipping to the W., and 
in the northern part of the field turn N.E. and E., with granitic, 
dioritic, and other dykes. 
On them lie remnants of an old table-land of the Mesozoic 
“ Desert Sandstone” of Australia, consisting of horizontally bedded 
sandstones, clays, pipeclays, gypsum, and ferruginous layers. The 
alluvium in the water-courses, flats, and salt-marshes rarely exceeds 
20 feet in thickness; there is also local travertine and other surface 
deposits. The alluvium has been derived largely from the Desert 
Sandstone, and partly from the metamorphic rocks; the latter débris, 
coarse and stony, sometimes overlies the former, because these older 
rocks were exposed to denudation after the Sandstones; hence the 
auriferous “wash” is not always on the true bottom; nor does it 
usually run in “leads,” not having been shifted and sorted by 
running water. Definite “gutters,” however, were found on the 
bed-rock at Lake-Austin Island and at Quin’s. 
The “reefs” have a high dip; and, where opened down to the 
water-level, often contain galena as well as iron-pyrites; in some 
cases copper-pyrites and antimony. For the most part they seem 
to be “fissure-veins,” of variable size and extent. They have 
“shoots,” or small parallel fissure-veins ; and there are also “ cross- 
courses,” rich at their intersection of main north-and-south reefs, 
such as the “ Star of the Hast,” a true lode, but much broken. 
The water-supply is good for the most part; excepting at the 
