48 Fingal and East Coast. 



lar and light scoriaceous cinder. The coal has not, how- 

 ever, been entirely burnt out where ignited ; but it has 

 been reduced at some points to a thickness of only two 

 feet ; and it varies from two to four feet in depth in the 

 same extent laterally along- the course of the seam. The 

 interspaces are filled up with fragments of red sandstone, 

 baked clay, cinders, ashes, and rubbish. 



As this fire must have happened long before the occu- 

 pation of the Island by Europeans, and the Aborigines 

 knew nothing of the combustible properties of this 

 mineral, it is to be presumed that the coal caught from 

 a bush-fire or from lightning in the course of some very 

 arid summer, when the creek was dried up. This fact is 

 not unimportant as a prima facie proof of the quality 

 of the coal. 



The distance between the out-crops of the i 2-feet seam 

 in the two creeks mentioned does not exceed 90 yards. 

 The dip of the bed from creek to creek is about one in 

 25 ; but even in this space it undulates, and varies in 

 direction from east to E.N.E. 



This seam yields a very hard and compact body of coal, 

 having a structure somewhat slaty. Its colour is greyish 

 black, and its lustre is rather dull, but it is intermixed 

 with layers of a resplendent shining black : it is greasy 

 to the touch, and scarcely soils the fingers : its fracture 

 is flat, and flat conchoidal ; its cross fracture is semi- 

 splintery and uneven : iron pyrites is sparingly dissemi- 

 nated in it : when ignited, it burns, emitting jets of a clear 

 white and yellowish white light, with a strong heat, and 

 leaves a white slaty cinder, which, on continued exposure 

 to the combustion of a common fire, is resolved into 

 light white ashes. 



In this seam there are two or three ribbons of a whitish 

 clay, but not exceeding an inch in thickness. There is 

 a bed of grey sandstone over the coal, and a schistose 

 clay, having impressions of ferns, &c. under it. 



