196 TERTIARY ROCKS OF AUSTRALASIA, 



solid sheet of basalt, and apparently occupying the crevices 

 of the partly denuded surface of an older flow. The bones 

 and teeth so found appear to belong to Marsupials of the 

 following genera : — Hypsiprymnus, Phalangista, Phas- 

 colomys. 



Formerly both Mr, Gould and Mr. Allport concluded 

 from the bone remains that the " Geilston travertin must 

 be of Recent Tertiary or Post-Tertiary age," and conse- 

 quently that the associated intrusive basalt must be of still 

 more recent origin. 



The discovery of certain fossil seeds of plants, which 

 have since proved to be identical with fruits widely distri- 

 buted in Australia and Tasmania, in Palseogene forma- 

 tions, led Mr. Allport to enquire more particularly into 

 the circumstances connected with the discovery of the fossil 

 bones. This enquiry fully justified his supposition that 

 the bones were obtained from a matrix derived from the 

 originally deposited travertin, and deposited in crevices of 

 the same rock probably formed by the intrusion of the 

 overlying basalt. (Notice of Roy. Soc. Proc. of Tas., 

 13th June, 1876). 



In a paper on the Launceston Tertiary Basin, read 

 before the Royal Society of Tasmania in the year 1876, 

 the author suggested that the travertin beds might belong 

 to the sam.e series as those in the neighbourhood of Laun- 

 ceston, and possibly of the same age as the marine beds 

 at Table Cape and elsewhere in Australia. Tliis sugges- 

 tion was made because of the close resemblance between 

 certain of the undetermined leaf remains common in the 

 respective deposits, and from the circumstance that all 

 the deposits referred to are capped by a more or less 

 decomposed basalt ; all of which, upon analysis, proves to 

 be the same chemically and structurally. Professor Ulrich 

 also informed the author that the basalts at Geilston Bay, 

 Breadalbane, and Table Cape are essentially the same as 

 the rock known as the " Older Volcanic " in Victoria, 

 which also frequently caps the marine beds in Victoria, 

 now certainly proved to be of the same horizon as the 

 marine beds at Table Cape. The recent discovery of 

 Sapotacites oligoneuris (Ett.) in the inarine beds of Table 

 Cape, also common to the lacustrine beds, seems to confirm 

 this view. 



The author has also gathered abundant evidence of the 



