466 Notices of Memoirs — Tertiary Coal-heds, Victoria. 



( 2) Climates and Physical Conditions of the Eaelt Pke-Cambrian. 

 By Professor A. P. Coleman, F.lt.S., Toronto. 



OTJll knowledge of the later Pre- Cambrian permits us to speak of 

 desert conditions in the Keweenawan or Torridonian and of an 

 ice age followed by a cool climate in the Huronian, but little evidence 

 has been given as to earlier climates. Eeceut work in Canada shows 

 that the Sudbury Series, of Pre-Laurentian age and very much older 

 than the Huronian, includes all types of sediments, often well enough 

 preserved to show cross-bedding, ripple-marks, and annual layers 

 indicating the change of seasons. They must have been formed near 

 the margin of a continent where granites weathered under a cool 

 and moist climate. They seem to be delta materials deposited by 

 great rivers. 



The highly metamorphosed sediments of the still older Grenville 

 and Keewatin Series (Lewisian?) have lost their original structures, 

 but the gneisses, quartzites, and marbles must have been clay, sand, 

 and limestone in the beginning, and the graphite may have originated 

 in plants. Land surfaces must have been attacked by water and air 

 to produce these materials, and there is no evidence that the climate 

 was hot. These are the earliest known formations, so that air and 

 water worked in the usual way at the beginning of recorded 

 geological time. 



(3) The Teetiaey Bkown Coal-beds of Victoeia. By H. Herman, 

 B.C.E., M.M.E., F.G.S., Director of the Geological Survey of 

 Victoria. 



IHE brown coal-beds of Victoria are probably the thickest yet 



T 



La Trobe Valley, Alberton, Altona, and Lai Lai. Minor beds are 

 widely distributed. 



The geological age has not yet been definitely fixed, except at 

 Altona, where a brown coal-seam 140 feet thick underlies marine 

 Oligocene beds. Flows of basalt overlie the brown coal in places, 

 and underlie it in others. The range in age is probably from 

 Oligocene upwards. Seams outcrop at jS'arracan, Thorpdale, Dean's 

 March, Morwell, and Boolarra. 



Where below the surface, the seams are prospected by boring. In 

 many bores coal of several hundred feet in thickness is shown ; one 

 bore had an aggregate thickness of 781 feet of coal in a depth of 

 1,010 feet. The overburden is from a few feet to 500 feet deep. 



In the Alberton area of about 300 square miles and the La Trobe 

 Valley area of 700 square miles there is probably 30,000,000,000 

 tons of coal. The approximate area at Altona is 200 square miles, 

 with a probable average thickness of 50 feet of coal. At Lai Lai the 

 coal covers 3 square miles with an average thickness of 80 feet. 



The geological and geographical distribution of the various brown 

 coal-seams is still being ascertained by boring; the bores are being 

 systematically tested for calorific value, gas production, and by- 

 products. A typical analysis of the brown coal, as freshly 

 mined, is — 



