170 DR LAUDER LINDSAY ON THE 



for the ready delivery of the fuel into small coasting traders for the Dunedin 

 market. 



At Coal Point, in the coast cliffs, two or three miles northwest of the mouth 

 of the Clutha river, occur the best natural sections of the brown coal strata 

 I saw in Otago. Here these strata consist of various seams of coal of different 

 characters or qualities, separated by or associated with laminae or beds of con- 

 glomerates, quartzose gravels, grits, and sandstones ; clays, including fire-clay, 

 pipe-clay, fine coloured clays, and carbonaceous and arenaceous clays, some- 

 times laminated; and carbonaceous and other shales. They contain various 

 fossils, in the form chiefly of dicotyledonous leaves, fragments of lignite, stems of 

 trees, and other plant impressions ; as well as ironstone concretions and iroD 

 pyrites. Overlying the brown coal strata is a series of conglomerates, gravels, 

 sands, and clays, generally more or less ferruginous ; of newer Tertiary age ; essen- 

 tially identical with those overlying the brown coals of the Saddlehill district. 

 These beds, too, contain nodules of clay ironstone, which are further scattered in 

 all directions on the beach at the foot of the cliffs. Their appearance and posi- 

 tion reminded me strongly of those of the carboniferous shales of Wardie. It 

 does not appear that the stratigraphical relations of the Tertiary coals in other 

 parts of Otago and New Zealand differ — save in minor and local details — from 

 those of the brown coals of the Saddlehill and Kaitangata basins, as here roughly 

 sketched. 



Before leaving Otago I visited the Tuapeka gold-field, where I had an oppor- 

 tunity of seeing the relations of the brown coal, which is now being worked at 

 Laurence, Wetherstone's, and Waitahuna. From Otago I passed northwards to 

 the provinces of Nelson and Auckland. In neither of these, however, had I any 

 opportunity of inspecting the Tertiary coal strata in situ. My examinations were 

 confined to the suites of coal specimens contained in the Provincial Museums of 

 these provinces, or in the hands of coal proprietors or amateur geological col- 

 lectors. Unfortunately, the value of the Museum series — which, in the Auckland 

 Museum at least, is somewhat extensive — is seriously detracted from by their 

 careless nomenclature and classification, and by the improper or defective method 

 of exhibition. The plan adopted in the Museum of Science and Art, Edinburgh, 

 and in other of our own national Museums, should forthwith be copied in these, 

 as well as other, colonial museums, — viz., to accompany each specimen with a 

 full descriptive label, setting forth not only its locality, and date and circum- 

 stances of collection, but its chemical composition ; and to classify it after some 

 uniform plan, geological or chemical. Were this done, such series of specimens 

 could not fail to acquire a great local as well as general value, instead of being, 

 as at present, little more than a mass of lumber. 



In the Great Exhibition at London in 1862 (New Zealand department), I was 

 further enabled to examine a pretty complete series of all the New Zealand coals 



