28 Goal Seams near Stony Creek 



The recent railway-cuttings from Maitland to the back of 

 Harpur's Hill, and to Singleton, have afforded good oppor- 

 tunities for testing the character of the formation in which 

 the seams are situated. 



West Maitland Station is 16 feet above the sea; Lochinvar 

 Station, 200 ; and, according to my measurement, Harpur's 

 Hill is 38-5 feet above the sea, the highest level in the 

 cuttings between them being 300 feet. To the Wollombi- 

 road Station the distance from West Maitland is 2 miles, 

 and from the Lochinvar Station 4J miles. This line occurs 

 on the south side of the hill in which the coal-pits have 

 been sunk, and at the distance of half a mile. On the north 

 side, the main road from Maitland to Harpur's Hill meets 

 the road from Stony Creek, the former nearly parallel with 

 the railway line, and the latter transverse to it. The 

 summit of the hill is about 160 feet above the sea, the slopes 

 falling gradually to Maitland and to Stony Creek. 



From West Maitland and 2 miles farther (East Maitland), 

 to about 2 J miles towards Lochinvar, the whole country is 

 occupied by a succession of beds of sandstone, grit, and cal- 

 careous concretionary rock, full of fossils of Palaeozoic age, 

 such as Spivifers, Producti, Conularice, Qrihoceratites, 

 Asteriadce,Packydomi, JEuryolesmce, Fenestellas, Bellerophon, 

 &c, which are exposed in the cuttings, and in quarries, and 

 on surface blocks. They all dip more or less to points between 

 E. and S.S.E., but where the rock is highly concretionary and 

 nodular there is an apparent divergence or meeting of dips, 

 where two concretionary nodular masses come together : 

 and in such case, the surface dip may be towards N.E. 

 This is the case in the lower part of Stony Creek, which has 

 a short course between such masses. But in the railway 

 line the beds covering the more solid portions dip persistently 

 in the same direction. 



At the point indicated above, these beds begin to be 

 troubled by infusions of amygdaloidal trap, or by basalt, 

 and thence to Harpur's Hill, the igneous and sedimentary 

 rocks irregularly alternate, Harpur's Hill itself consisting of 

 concretionary masses and beds partially derived from igneous 

 matter, and containing fossils of the same Palaeozoic forma- 

 tion, which Professor M'Coy. has long ago determined to be 

 at the base of the " Lower Carboniferous " formation of Ire- 

 land. The strike of the main axis of the intrusive dyke of 

 Trap, and of the minor dykes that cut through the sedi- 

 mentary deposits, is from N.W. to S.E. On the N.W. side 



