at the Don and Tamar Rivers. 93 
a little peat, supporting a vegetation of low ferns, with thick- 
ets of Prickly Mimosa (Acacia verticillata), and of various 
species of Tea-trees (Leptospermum and Melaleuca), in- 
terspersed amongst Hucalpyti of moderate size, and com- 
paratively thin on the ground. 
Pursuing the bush-road as it winds close round the 
shoulder of the greenstone tier, the ridges or prolongations 
from it become higher and more steep; the water-courses 
more frequent and deeper, and the soil acquires the character 
of a stiff, tenacious, and humid loam, and is densely clothed 
with large and lofty trees of Stringy-bark, and umbrageous 
underwood, Tree-ferns, &c. &e. 
The Don, running almost immediately at the base of this 
tier, on its western side, is but a small stream, with a channel 
for the most part shut in between high ridges, much ob- 
structed with dead timber, and everywhere overhung with 
the sombre and massive foliage of the myrtle trees ( Fagus 
Cunninghamit) : its tributaries, though perennial, are insig- 
nificant rills, and drain but a small portion of the tract of 
country between it and the Mersey. The Coal rocks crop 
out here in the channel of the Don River, where it makes a 
rather sudden bend to the eastward, but only along a space 
of twenty to thirty yards. It was in this water-course, and 
more or less covered with water, that I had the opportunity of 
examining them. I was able to make out three beds of Coal, 
varying from about ten inches to fifteen and sixteen inches 
in thickness, dipping guzck to the eastward. ‘These are inter- 
stratified with a bluish white clayey sandstone, rich with 
impressions of strap-shaped leaves, and with layers of hard 
black bituminous shale, which breaks in slaty fragments— 
soils the fingers, yields a sooty black streak, and in a common 
fire crackles and burns with a bright steady flame of no long 
continuance: there is also associated a thick bed of blue 
