52 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [June 14, 



recognize his description ; and at Jurieu Bay there is an extent of 

 more than 1 50 square miles of grassy and wooded country elevated 

 from forty to eighty feet above the level of the sea, of so recent a 

 date that many of the shells still existing in great beds upon it have 

 not even lost their colours. 



About five miles eastward of Champion Bay, Moresby's flat-topped 

 range (of which Mount Fairfax is the eastern outlier) consists of a 

 ferruginous clay formation with prismatic escarpments, elevated 300 

 to 400 feet above the surrounding sandy plains, and from 500 to 600 

 feet above the sea, passing into sandstone-^, conglomerates and por- 

 phyritic rocks. Those iron-clay hills extend here from fifty to sixty 

 miles to the east, and have the appearance of a table-land cut into 

 pieces by a vehement ocean-current directed from south-east to north- 

 west. 



Eastward the high country begins to rise again, and consequently 

 to form watersheds, directed against the valleys of the clay table-land. 

 This new rise extends in the mean only from ten to twenty miles, with 

 an additional altitude of 100 to 200 feet, and in a direction pointing 

 nearly from Cape Riche on the south coast to the centre of Shark's 

 Bay on the west coast. It is constituted entirely of the diiferent 

 strata of the coal formation, with the exception of the calcareous mem- 

 bers, as in all that line neither carboniferous nor mountain limestone 

 exists below the coal. 



The clay of the table-land passes here, almost in a direction from 

 west to east, into a fine-grained sandstone or a conglomerate amygda- 

 loid or true porphyry ; and eastward, where the country still rises, 

 grauwacke appears in combination with hornblende rocks and mica- 

 ceous gneiss. 



From this place the country descends gradually farther to the east 

 for a distance of about 1 50 miles, forming extensive plains of red 

 decomposed iron-clay covered with a high and dense scrub of the Me- 

 laleuca, passing over into swamps or lakes covered with gypsum in- 

 terstratified with new red sandstone and iron-conglomerate, indicating 

 a second parallel coal-field. 



Dr. Sommer traced the first or western coal-field down from the 

 heads of the Irwin river to those of the Moore, a distance of about 

 160 miles, and has transmitted specimens of the coals, shales, sand- 

 stones, and petrifactions of these localities. The first stratum of coal 

 is six feet, the second eight feet thick ; both quite near to the sur- 

 face, and bearing from N.N.W. to S.S.E., and dipping to the W.N.W. 

 under an angle of about 72°. 



A section of the country at the north branch of the Irwin gives 

 the following series in descending order : — 



feet. 



iVlluvial soil 5 



Yellowish and reddish clay 10 



Soft white sandstone 10 



Ferruginous sandstone 1 



Micaceous soft white sandstone 15 



Porphyritic iron-clay 4 



