Cxliv PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



As even the calcareous matter occasionally connected with the sand- 

 stones has hitherto produced no fossils, the determination of age must 

 depend on other considerations, such as the position of the beds and 

 the fragments, of rocks they contain ; and on such evidence Professor 

 Nicol concludes that the upper formation belongs to a far more recent 

 period than the underlying sandstones. To connect it, however, with 

 still more recent formations is a matter of difficulty ; great numbers 

 of fragments, however, of a compact white limestone are scattered on 

 the shore near Tmafiiline, opposite to Island Ewe, and, having been 

 but little worn by transport, appear to be the remnants of a formation 

 now worn away. The fossils they contain show that the formation 

 must have been the same as the Oolite of the North of Skye (which 

 therefore must have once had a very considerable extension), and add 

 to the probability that the red sandstones were all upper members 

 of the Trias, or perhaps of the Lower Lias ; and that these small 

 patches are also relics of a much more extensive formation. Professor 

 Mcol offers some interesting observations on the variation in the 

 amount of metamorphic action ; and closes his paper by pointing out 

 what he considers to have been glacier- moraines — one ridge of boul- 

 ders of gneiss and other rocks having been the terminal, and another 

 the lateral moraine of a glacier cradled in the mountain-valley in 

 which Loch Fuir now lies. 



Of other papers, less directly falling into the divisions of the sub- 

 ject I have adopted, one by Mr. R. Brough Smyth is of much 

 interest, as it brings under our notice a district in the Colony of 

 Victoria, Australia, remarkable for volcanic products and other 

 evidences of recent igneous action. This district is represented as 

 250 miles in length, and 90 miles in breadth ; and Mr. Smyth enu- 

 merates many hills of various heights (some as much as 700 and 

 1500 feet) in which either craters can be traced, or marked relics of 

 volcanic action discovered. An interesting letter from Mr. Selwyn, 

 the colonial geologist, states that one of them, " Tower Hill, is cer- 

 tainly the most recent volcanic vent he had seen in Victoria," as the 

 ash and scorias emitted during its later eruptions rest on beds of 

 shell, sand, and earthy limestone containing numbers of the living 

 littoral species of Mollusca. The crater now forms a lake. 



Whilst granite appears to be the basic rock of the Victoria system, 

 Mr. Smyth recognizes two eruptions of basalt — the most ancient 

 having penetrated the Palaeozoic and Tertiary strata, and the newer 

 having not only penetrated these, but overflowed the Tertiary (form- 

 ing, it is presumed, a sheet of submarine lava), being, however, 

 sometimes underlain by an intervening bed of hard quartz rock, 

 and overlain by a quartzose drift, and by the recent volcanic lava. 

 The Tertiary beds are, from their fossils, considered of miocene age ; 

 they do not appear to have been disturbed by the eruptions, but con- 

 tinue horizontal. The streams of lava are in some places more than 

 25 miles in length, and of great thickness; and the occurrence of auri- 

 ferous deposits around the centres of eruption, and the contiguity of 

 the extinct cones to the great volcanic chain which extends from the 

 Aleutian Isles to New Zealand, give, in Mr. Smith's opinion, a pecu- 



