Western Victoria. 69 



At the fishermen's huts, the limestone rests directly on the 

 lava, but it is unaltered along the plane of contact. 



A-bout a quarter of a mile south of the fishermen's huts 

 the cliflT shows an interesting section. At the top there is 

 about 40 feet of limestone, then 30 feet of thick bedded lava, 

 3 feet of olive green ash, in thin layers, then eight or nine 

 distinct shallow flows of black slaggy lava ; and under these 

 5 or 6 feet of olive green bedded ash, and then the face is 

 marked by a bouldery beach. The special feature of the section 

 is the lower lava flow. The nine thin beds of the latter form 

 a mass crescentic in section, with the horns pointing slightly 

 downwards. It is about 20 feet thick in the centre, and at 

 a distance of 50 feet on either side of the central point it 

 tapers out. No parting material separates the several flows ; 

 the lowest lies conformably upon an ash bed, and is tolerably 

 compact, but the top one has a slaggy scoriaceous surface. 

 The south edge of the flow is truncated, by the clifl" turning 

 sharply to the west, so as to give a section of it almost at a 

 right angle to that just described. In this longitudinal 

 section the lava and ash beds are seen to have a dip to the 

 east of forty degrees. (See sketches X^ and X^.) 



About 50 yards south of thecrescentic-sectioned lava beds, 

 the ash beds are traversed by a vertical lava dyke, which, 

 emerging from the sea, rises to a height of about fifty 

 feet. It is composed of two slabs of about equal size, the 

 total thickness of the dyke being about two feet ; its 

 strike is north-east and south-west. The ash beds are 

 darker for a few inches on either side of it, as if they were 

 somewhat burnt. 



Mr. Dennant has recently stated, that this dyke joins the 

 overlying basalt, and his paper contains a drawing showing 

 such a junction. After a very careful examination of the 

 clifi", I must say that I could see no such confluence. The 

 dyke tapers to a point at the top, and terminates in the ash at 

 a considerable distance beneath the lava. There may be a 

 junction, nevertheless, though it is not visible in the section. 

 To the south of the dyke most of the cliffs rose sheer out of 

 deep water, and could not be reached. Examined through a 

 glass, they presented a solid smooth wall of ash 250 feet high, 

 and nearly vertical. It will be noticed, that between the 

 first place of appearance of the ash and this point, a distance 

 of half a mile, the ash beds have increased in thickness from 

 5 feet to 250 feet, and their dip has increased from ten to 

 forty degrees. The cinders contained in the ash have 



