THE DESERT SANDSTONE. 291 



silicified wood. An exception to this is mentioned by Mr. 

 Taylor. I may state, however, that I searched in vain in 

 the neighbourhood of the locality named, and my impressions are 

 that it would be more likely that the fossils belonged to the 

 underlying Cretaceous formation. (3) It is of a broken precipitous 

 character, forming tablelands with precipitous faces, and round, 

 flat-topped hills. (4) Wherever met with it bears marks of being 

 much denuded. Water seems easily to have broken it up and 

 ■denuded it, cutting it down into astounding precipices and 

 forming country of the roughest description, utterly impassable 

 for man or beast. (5) Its generally uniform height is another 

 feature ; 500 to 600 feet is the highest elevation in North 

 Australia, but in North- Western Australia Mr. Frank Gregory 

 speaks of the same formation attaining 1000 feet high. The 

 Desert Sandstone is found in detached hills and plateaux of 

 varying extent. (6) In close proximity to it there are nearly 

 always recent volcanic formations. 



So peculiar a formation was very early a puzzling geological 

 problem to those who made a study of the geology and physical 

 geography of Australia. Mr. Daintree imagined that, at one 

 time, the strata to which he was the first to give the name of 

 " Desert Sandstone," extended over the whole Continent, and his 

 opinion has been more or less followed by subsequent geologists 

 and explorers in their writings and maps. It is certain that the 

 formation reappears very often on the coast and throughout the 

 interior in the form of detached outliers w r ith a certain uniform 

 aspect, so that it may be easily believed that such outliers were 

 once connected together. My own observations have made me 

 notice further that these outliers of Desert Sandstone are always 

 in the neighbourhood of rivers and creeks, and seem equally 

 connected with the ancient volcanic emanations which form 

 portions of the dividing ranges. The following is Mr. Daintree's 

 description : — 



*"On the eastern branches of the upper Flinders River and 

 elsewhere tine sections are exposed of lava, resting on horizontal 

 beds of coarse grit and conglomerate, which lie in turn 

 un conformably on olive-coloured and grey shales with inter- 

 stratified bands and nodules of argillaceous limestone, containing 

 fossils of cretaceous affinities. I have called this upper 

 conglomerate series " Desert Sandstone," from the sandy barren 

 character of its disintegrated soil, which makes the term 

 particularly applicable. Only a few rolled fragments of coniferous 

 wood have been found imbedded in it, proving nothing as to its 



* Daintree. " Notes on the Geology of the Colony of Queensland, with 

 an appendix containing descriptions of the fossils," from the "Quarterly 

 Journal of the Geological Society" for August, 1872, p. 275. 



