Maranoa District in Queensland. 41 



sands and pebbles of the interior may have had a similar 

 origin, and the red hue of the sands of the desert seems 

 clearly traceable to the sandstone plateaux on its outskirts.* 



The fossils, to be described below, are found in concre- 

 tionary masses, of boulder-like form, of a highly calcareous 

 very fine grit, which, under examination, appear to have a 

 similar partly igneous origin with the calcareous grits of the 

 Bulbunmutta and other Wianamatta ranges ; other patches 

 of this rock in decomposition resemble green sand in 

 appearance. The prevalence of the calcareous cement in the 

 Wianamatta rocks has always puzzled me in the absence of 

 molluscs, &c, in these ranges. It is certainly not improbable 

 that shelly beds will be found in them, seeing that fish of 

 more than one genus, and a few other zoological fossils, occur, 

 as well as fragments of fossil-wood, traces of coal, and ferns. 



It will always be a source of great uncertainty to assign 

 the era of the sandstones and conglomerates of Australia, 

 without fossils, because there is a prevalence of such rocks, 

 very like in general character, from the top of the Hawkes- 

 bury rocks to the bottom of the Spirifer beds, in which 

 fossil-wood and coal occur ; but combining all the fresh 

 information now accumulating around us, we may hope ere 

 long to have the various stages in our geological scale rightly 

 adjusted, and that without prejudice to such observers as 

 maintain stoutly only what they believe on the evidence 

 submitted to them. 



I have not thought fit to encumber these remarks with 

 any allusion to the occurrence of rocks not immediately con- 

 nected with the subject, though I possess numerous data as 

 to the geological state of the country in the more northern 

 districts. 



I will merely mention, in conclusion, that red sandstone, 

 capping the rocks above the Newcastle coal-seams of the 

 Mackenzie River, was noticed by Gregory, -f at a height of 

 from 800 to 1,000 feet above the level sandstone on the 

 bank of the Comet, where the coal occurs in association with 

 " fern leaves of that formation," J at a height, by my calcu- 



* In my notes to Leichardt's journal in Waugh's Almanac (1860), I have 

 mentioned the holes of the great burrowing animal found in the red soil by 

 Leichardt and Mitchell. I am now able to pronounce the animal a gigantic 

 wombat. 



f North Australian Expl. Exped. 128. T. R. G. S., xxviii. 



,£ Leichardt's Journal of Overland Expedition, p. 105. 



