24 Victoria as a Field for Geologists. 



is one of no little practical importance. If, as I think, we 

 must conclude the lowest tertiary drift is the richest, because 

 it is formed of debris gathered from quartz lying high in the 

 reef, how much richer may we not expect to find that drift 

 which, by being accumulated in palaeozoic times, must 

 necessarily have occupied a much higher position, and, con- 

 sequently, have been still more charged with auriferous 

 particles. The difficulty will be to find this drift, hid as it 

 must be below vast thicknesses of the old sandstones. 



Upon this series of rocks repose the so-called carboniferous 

 strata of the colony, and which are generally referred to the 

 mesozoic period. The true age of our own beds seems now 

 to have been definitely settled, but this is scarcely the case 

 with what may be termed the kindred deposits of the sister 

 colonies. In Hobart' Town are a series of sandstones, shales, 

 and coal seams, very like our own. They lay conformably, 

 though at some distance above, a deposit of lime-stone, 

 thought to be Devonian, or at least lower carboniferous. It 

 is hardly to be supposed then but that these facts, together 

 with the often-cherished overweening desire for an ancient 

 lineage, should induce our neighbours to go just a little 

 mad, or at least to display a little amount of unreasonable- 

 ness, in claiming a high antiquity for the ground they tread 

 on. 



In a former paper, read before this Society, I mentioned 

 the finding of certain Batrachian remains in these beds, 

 which go far, as it would appear, to settle the disputed 

 point, and prove that the coal is rather of the secondary than 

 of the true carboniferous period. 



In New South Wales the same question is by no means 

 so nearly decided. Great authorities declare for the beds 

 being mesozoic, and gTeat authorities also have declared the 

 other way. I hope to show you the practical bearing of all 

 this directly. 



We have here, then, in two out of three colonies, coal beds 

 known to be mesozoic, and in the third, large deposits of 

 coal which is said to be of the true carboniferous type. In 

 no country does it appear that the newer deposits of coal 

 equal the older in richness ; and in this part of the world, 

 what are said to be of the latter age are by far the most 

 extensive. In Victoria, the whole of the carbonaceous rocka 

 (Oolitic) are but sparingly developed. If no really palaeozoic 

 coal is discovered in any of the adjacent colonies, the natural 

 presumption is that, at the time when the true carboniferous 



