296 w. j. c. ross. 



of stone appears at first to be a combination of that which forms 

 the escarpment, but between the two a very different rock comes 

 in. This is a rather coarse-grained quartz-felspar-porphyry. It 

 seems clearly to be intrusive, but in one specimen shows the 

 impression of a crinoid stem ; this may have been caught up by 

 the rock when intruded. 



The Fernbrook rock is much broken up by irregular joints into 

 large blocks. It appears likely that it was shattered by the 

 intrusion of the quartz-porphyry and the fragments afterwards 

 cemented together. The iron present in the limestone, or intro- 

 duced from outside, has no doubt become peroxidised and imparted 

 the red colour to much of the rock. The irregular distribution 

 of the colour, which gives its characteristic appearance to the 

 marble, may be due to small differences of texture modifying the 

 deposition of the iron. Very few of the corals, so common in 

 the other beds, can be seen in polished specimens of Fernbrook 

 stone, but on the other hand, fossil cephalopoda are tolerably 

 abundant. They are not usually very evident on rough specimens 

 but when ground and polished show out remarkably well ; there 

 often being several species represented on the same piece of stone. 

 It is only within the last few months that I have been on the 

 look out for cephalopoda especially, and I have not had much 

 opportunity for collecting specimens, but I have already found 

 several which are now exhibited (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4). So far I have 

 not found a single cephalopod in either of the other beds. 



Palaeontology. 



The fossils hitherto found at Limekilns include hydro-corallines, 

 corals, crinoids, brachiopoda, and cephalopoda. One new coral 

 has already been described and named Phillipsastrea Currani, 

 after the Rev. J. M. Curran, by Mr. R. Etheridge, Junr.* I 

 have placed two parcels of fossils from the locality in Mr. R. 

 Etheridge's hands. These have not yet, I believe, been systemati- 

 cally examined, but representatives of the Stromatoporidce, Favo- 



* Records Geol. Surv. N.S.W., Vol. n., Pt. iv., 1892, p. 166, PI. xi. 



