160 King Georges Sound. paet r. 



western shores of South America, which are strewed 

 with sea-shells, and have been formed during intervals 

 of rest in the slow elevation of the land, could doubt 



that the New Zealand terraces have been similarly 



•j 



formed. I may add, that Dr. Dieffenbach, in his de- 

 scription of the Chatham Islands, 1 (S.W. of New Zealand) 

 states that it is manifest ' that the sea has left many 

 places bare which were once covered by its waters.' 



King George's Sound. 



This settlement is situated at the south-western 

 ansfle of the Australian continent: the whole country 

 is granitic, with the constituent minerals sometimes 

 obscurely arranged in straight or curved lamina?. In 

 these cases, the rock would be called by Humboldt, 

 gneiss-granite, and it is remarkable that the form of 

 the bare conical hills, appearing to be composed of 

 great folding layers, strikingly resembles, on a small 

 scale, those composed of gneiss-granite at Rio de Janeiro, 

 and those described by Humboldt at Venezuela. These 

 plutonic rocks are, in many places, intersected by trap- 

 pean-dikes ; in one place, I found ten parallel dikes 

 ranging in an E. and W. line ; and not far off another 

 set of eight dikes, composed of a different variety of 

 trap, ranging at right angles to the former ones. I 

 have observed in several primary districts, the occur- 

 rence of systems of dikes parallel and close to each other. 



Superficial ferruginous beds. — The lower parts of 

 the country are everywhere covered by a bed, following 

 the inequalities of the surface, of a honeycombed sand- 

 stone, abounding with oxides of iron. Beds of nearly 

 similar composition are common, I believe, along the 

 whole western coast of Australia, and on many of the 



1 ' Geographical Journal,' vol. si. pp. 202, 205. 



