46 Fingnl and East Coast. 



plain, forming bold cliffs, in which a vertical thickness of 

 40 or 50 feet of its fossil beds is apparent, dips in 

 toward the hill. 



Several hundred feet of the brown sandstone are trace- 

 able in the successive escarpments which present at dif- 

 ferent elevations along the face of this hill ; but there are 

 many intervals where the edges of the strata are deeply 

 covered, and concealed from view, with debris from above. 



Immediately over the limestone here there are beds 

 of a green sandstone, and a conglomerate more or less 

 ferruginous. These are succeeded by one of those long 

 intervals where the rocks are hidden under a mass of 

 detached fragments of greenstone, stratified rocks. 

 and soil, and just where we ought to look for indications 

 of the true coal group. 



The coal-measures must be remarkably scant, if they 

 have not altogether thinned out and disappeared at this 

 point, — a question wdiich can only be determined by a 

 closer examination of every accessible portion of the hill , 

 Between this hill and Mount St. Patrick the strata 

 coming to the surface are clay-slate, with overlying beds 

 of ferruginous grit ; and they do not attain an elevation 

 of more than 1000 or 11 00 feet above the sea. 



St. Patrick's Head is stated by Strzelecki to be of 

 syenitic granite. Time, and the state of the weather, 

 did not permit of my ascending it; but St. Mary's Pass 

 and hills adjoining are of hornblendic granite, which 

 gradually passes through a porphyritic granite with horn- 

 blende into ordinary micaceous granite in the direction 

 of Falmouth, and down the East Coast. 



I have stated that hills of granite and transition schists 

 prevail upon the northern margin of the South Esk, 

 from near Avoca to its junction with the Break-o'-day 

 River ; and that the Mount Nicholas range, which 

 stretches easterly from their confluence, hemming in 



