234 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GHOLOGICAL SOCIHTY. 
and sandstones, mostly red, and evidently partly fused by igneous 
action. The calcareous sandstone occurs along the creeks and downs 
where water has denuded it; and above all is a coarse grit. The de- 
scending section in the creek-bauk, where the fossiliferous nodules 
occur, at Wollumbilla is as follows :— 
1. Brown stiff soil, full of pebbles of quartz much water-worn. 
2. Clay. 
33 Sign marl, very friable above, but hard below, charged 
with strings of crystalline carbonate of lime, and breaking into rect- 
angular fragments. In this occur the caleareous masses. On the east, 
at about three miles distance, coarse conglomerates rise above these 
beds; and to the west, coarse alluvial sand occurs. The height of 
the section is about 15 feet ; the bluff end of the conglomerate rises 
to about 20 feet, and from it to the surface slopes away to the east- 
ward, the stratification being apparently horizontal. 
It is not improbable, I think, that the metamorphosed condition 
of the sands and grits referred to above may be due to mineralogical 
rather than to igneous action. 
The calcareous boulders from the Wollumbilla Creek, when broken, 
are found to be of a deep olive colour internally, a few presenting a 
dull brown or bluish hue. They are very compact. In all of them 
organic remains are very abundant. ‘The exteriors of many of the 
boulders are very much water-worn, and exhibit only sections of 
the organic remains they contain; whilst in others a certain amount 
of decomposition or oxidation of the surface has taken place, which 
has produced a rotten exterior, looking like an impure chalk, of a 
yellow or buff colour. When this is the case, the fossils stand out 
sharply from the matrix. An examination of the softer portions 
thus produced, has enabled me to detect the presence of Foraminifera 
(of nine European species) and Entomostraca, and many other re- 
mains which had not previously been recognized. One block of 
stone may be seen to be perforated in every direction by Serpule ; 
and there are to be recognized over its surface small teeth of fishes, 
Rhynchonelle of several species, Argyope, Nucula, arms and scattered 
plates of Pentacrinites, Natica, Pecten, Avicula, &c.; whilst masses 
of Purisiphona, a new genus of -fibro-siliceous Sponges, which hare 
resisted the decomposing action ‘to which the blocks haye been sub- 
jected, appear to be abundant. Other blocks seem to be almost com- 
posed of the detached valves of Conchifera, with an occasional 
Belemnite. From Maranoa there are examples in which the bed is 
seen to be almost made up of rolled and broken Belemnites, inter- 
mixed with small pebbles; whilst another from the Downs on the 
Nive river contains nothing but a mass of Mactra. 
As in Western Australia, a quantity of drift wood and vegetable 
matter is mixed up with the Queensland fossils; and it appears evi- 
dent, from the broken and abraded Belemnites and the condition of 
some of the shells, that they could not have been directly covered 
up, or that the parent beds were not deposited in a very tranquil 
ocean. One exception, however, to this is presented by blocks con- 
taining Pentacrinites from Mitchell Downs, which, though subse- 
