104 Report on the Coal said to have been Sound 
more’s residence : thence to Point Rapid the same beds are 
more or less continuously visible a little above high water- 
mark; and they may be traced even in Whirlpool Reach, 
where Mr. Reid has sunk no less than three shafts near the 
margin of the river, under the impression that they were the 
sure indications of coal. These clayey and ferruginous 
shales dip but very slightly towards the greenstone hills ; 
and at Ralston’s establishment, where a shaft has been sunk 
upwards of thirty feet, they are covered with post-tertiary 
beds of clay, containing impressions of leaves of trees and 
pieces of half decomposed Aino, associated with lignites, and 
a small Modiola-looking shell. The shore at high water- 
mark is strewn with casts and impressions of shells, resem- 
bling Nucule and the Solenacee mineralized in iron, and 
with fragments of eddie or red chalk: in both cases derived 
from the argillaceous ironstone beds. The clay-ironstone 
is nodular; and in each of the nodules is a nucleus, which on 
fracture will turn out the internal cast or external impres- 
sion of the two sides of a bivalve shell, more or less perfect: 
in the nodules occur also other organic forms, which close 
and repeated examination may hereafter afford to observers 
the means of determining. 
It is probable that the thick beds of ferruginous grit and 
iron conglomerate already stated to crop out from under the 
greenstone on the Point Effingham estate, on the east side 
of the river near to Middle Island, were at one time con- 
tinuous with these beds of clay and clay-ironstone which 
pass under Mr. Wilmore’s property. At Macquarie Har- 
bour, on the eastern side of its capacious and beautiful 
bay, I was so fortunate as to find good sections of similar 
strata, which, besides containing shells, exhibited a pro- 
fusion of impressions of the leaves and seed-vessels of 
plants peculiar to or characteristic of warmer climates than 
