172 Correspondence. 



mixed with the gold from the Ovens and Ballarat. This is, I be- 

 lieve, uncommon. 



" To the eastward of West Port Bay the country has never been 

 explored. I intended to have begun an examination of it this 

 autumn, but the wet weather having set in a month earlier than 

 usual, has obliged me to defer it till next summer, it being a very 

 difficult country to penetrate. There are no roads, and many 

 steep ranges covered with dense scrubs and thickly timbered. I 

 know it to he for the most part coal measures, and in this district 

 it is, if anywhere, that workable beds of coal, are likely to be dis- 

 covered. From what I have seen of the coal measure beds, they 

 seem to consist chiefly of thick bedded soft sandstones, green, 

 brown, and yellow, of various shades, and I think they are quite 

 unconformable on the older (Silurian or Cambrian) palaeozoic 

 auriferous rocks. Of this, however, I have no certain proof at 

 present. 



" The traps and basalt of the Western Port district, are evidently 

 of much older date than the great lava plains in the vicinity of 

 the diggings, which are the products of recent volcanoes, while the 

 former are, I should say, igneous, but not strictly volcanic. All the 

 districts occupied by the older igneous rocks are hilly, scrubby, 

 and densely timbered, while those occupied by the volcanic rocks 

 are open grassy plains, almost destitute of timber, with a few scat- 

 tered conical hills, apparently, for the most part, craters, or points 

 of eruption. There are, I find, traditions amongst the aborigines 

 of some of these hills having been seen on lire by their ancestors, 

 which does not seem improbable. In one or two I have visited, 

 the craters are distinctly visible with a small gap broken down on 

 one side of the wall." 



Spratt on the Occurrence of Coal in Turkey.— In the present 

 juncture of affairs, the following extract from a Letter from that 

 able geologist, Commander Spratt of the Spitfire, to Professor 

 Forbes, is of much interest, showing the possible supplies of coal 

 that may be obtained by Government for our steamers in the East. 



" I am truly glad to hear that the Kosloo coal proves to be of 

 the true carboniferous age by the fossils, as the governments here 

 are said to have some intention to work the mines by English 

 miners, and by their knowing that the district is really so valu- 

 able and promising, they may be induced to secure to themselves 

 a deeper share and interest in the working of the district ; for the 

 coal may be found in almost every valley betvveeen Erakle and 

 Amastris, at from one-half to seven or eight miles, and at various 

 elevations from 50 to nearly 1000 feet, and there are many 

 valleys which open into the sea on this line of coast. A fir.e spe- 

 culation is open here, the coal being found above the surface of 

 the sea at all angles on the sides of the valleys. It has been 



