OCCURRENCE OF A CHROMITE-BEARING ROCK IN BASALT, 40] 
PRELIMINARY Note on THE OCCURRENCE or a CHROMITE- 
BEARING ROCK in toe BASALT at tHE PENNANT 
HILLS QUARRY near PARRAMATTA. 
By Professor Davin, B.A., F.G.S., W. F. SMEETH, M.A., B.E., Assoc. 
R.S.M., and J. ALEXANDER WATT, M.A. 
[Read before the Royal Society of N. S. Wales, August 2, 1893. | 
Tue basalt quarry at the Pennant Hills has been described by 
Mr. C. 8. Wilkinson, F.c.s., the late Government Geologist.* 
With reference to this quarry Mr. Wilkinson states (loc. cit. ):— 
“Tt is an immense excavation from which the road metal is said 
_to have been taken for over fifty years. The rock consists of a 
dense but jointed basalt, containing small fragments of other rocks 
and some large masses of coaly shale, from which it would appear 
that this spot is the site of an ancient volcanic point of eruption.” 
Subsequent examination of this quarry by ourselves, inclines us 
to confirm Mr. Wilkinson’s opinion as to its having probably at 
one time formed part of a volcano, or at any rate having been 
definitely related to some veicanic outburst. 
General Geological Features. 
The Pennant Hills Quarry is distant about three miles north- 
easterly, from Parramatta, and about one and a-half miles westerly 
from Eastwood Railway Station on the Northern Line. The 
quarry has been worked intermittently for road metal, for which 
purpose the rock there is well adapted, for about sixty-three years, 
during which time an excavation has been formed about three 
hundred feet long, one hundred and fifty feet wide and seventy 
feet deep, which affords an excellent geological section. 
The rock quarried is seen to be an eruptive mass of basalt 
apparently of elongated oval shape, and more or less surrounded 
* Annual Report of the Department of Mines for 1879, page 218, Ap- 
pendix A. 
Z—Deec. 6, 1893. ] 
