﻿1861.] 



HECTOR — ItOCKY MOUNTAINS, ETC. 



425 



a. Buff, unstratified, earthy clay. — 12 feet. 



b. Ash-grey and cream-coloured sandy clays in hands with thin 



seams of clay-ironstone and carbonaceous layers ("Band- 

 ed clays"). 



Throughout this bed are angular pebbles of ironstone which 

 look like fragments of septaria. — 30 feet. 



c. Seam of pure lignite (" cuboidal lignite ")— 3 feet. 



d. "Banded clays " very sandy in some places. In other places 



the coal has been burnt out and the heat has converted the 

 upper beds of this group into material like broken tiles, 

 which lie scattered over the banks. Probably the ochre- 

 beds observed in some parts of the banks are the layers of 

 ash which represent the lignite-bed when consumed. 

 /. Brown coal. This bed is about 18 inches thick, and in thin 

 leaves, with a paper-like texture ; on it rests — 



e. 1 foot of siheified wood, composed of stems and trunks, and 



roots of large trees. In the bed these are of a deep 

 brown-black colour, but the fragments which lie scat- 

 tered about weather to a light-cream colour on the sur- 

 face. One silicified root measured 18 inches in diameter. 

 g. Sandy clays partially banded, varying from grey to light-cream 

 colour. Crystals of selenite are very common, but no large 

 masses were observed. This group has a very chalky 

 look from a distance. It is probably 100 feet thick, but 

 the base of the section was not observed. 



Although these beds are very variable, passing horizontally into 

 different varieties of shales, banded clays, and sandstones, still there 

 seemed to be a definite inclination to the N.E., so that in ascending 

 the river deeper beds were exposed. 



A few miles above Shell Creek the lower part of the banks are to 

 a great extent composed of a bed highly charged with ironstone 

 nodules, which have very irregular shapes, unlike the nodules in the 

 other parts of the strata. The profusion of these strewn on the 

 slopes of the valley reminded me of the heaps of roasted ironstone 

 scattered in the neighbourhood of iron-furnaces. A little way 

 further on, where a creek joins the valley, thick beds of coal 

 appear at the base of the section. The lowest bed is 4 to 5 feet 

 thick, and very compact and pure. It is included in the same gritty 

 sandy clay that everywhere forms the matrix of the coal. 



The iron- shales immediately overlie these beds, and these are again 

 overlain by the "banded clays" that form the base of the section 

 lower down. By following up Coal Creek for a few hundred yards 

 to where the banks attained a height of 250 feet above the burnt 

 lignite-seam, I found in a hard sandy limestone-bed the following 

 fossils : — 



Ostrea anomiseformis. Crassatella. 

 Mytilus (2 species). Venus. 

 Cardium multistriatum. Rostellaria. 



Paludina. 



No break was observed in the beds, and the succession of the strata 



