6 Coal Basin of New South Wales. 
the mineral has a texture somewhat like very closely 
grained wood, and breaks with a conchoidal fracture, but the 
seams do not appear to be of equal richness throughout any 
very great area. The small specimens which were obtained 
from a boring near Mount Victoria show considerable 
diversity in the same seam, and that within a very short dis- 
tance. The richest of these does not even approach in worth 
that of the main seam, but as they fell into my hands imme- 
diately after having been brought up by the borer, and as | 
they illustrate the variations met with I elected to 
exhibit them. The seams, although compact from top to 
bottom, are divided by perpendicular fissures into huge 
blocks, which divisions would seem to indicate that after 
deposition considerable shrinkage has taken place. Both 
above and below the seam are found layers of fireclay, and 
also strata of shale, much more impure than is the 
main seam, but containing large quantities of bituminous 
matter and highly inflammable. What is regarded as the 
equivalent deposits of the Hartley shales at Stony Creek, 
near Maitland, have almost the appearance of cannel coal, 
yielding a dense black oil of nearly the consistence of gas 
tar. The shales at American Creek, near Wollongong, are 
often nearly as soft as leather, can be cut into flakes with a 
knife, and the liquid yielded by distillation resembles a 
purely vegetable oil. 
In writing of the New South Wales’ coal measures, in his 
“Southern Gold-fields,” the Rev. W. B. Clarke says : 
‘“ Conglomerates of the carboniferous beds have been found 
by me occasionally auriferous—that is, pebbles in the rock © 
have contained visible gold. Such I have mentioned as — 
occurring on the north shore of Sydney Harbour, where I 
have collected some dozen specimens. But I consider these 
to have no commercial value, and, therefore, to have no 
bearing except in a geological point of view ; they merely 
tend to show that the opinions of certain distinguished 
geologists in Kurope, respecting the age of the gold, are not 
always applicable.” This statement is of especial interest to 
ourselves at present, since the Victorian Government geolo- 
gist has lately propounded a theory, that all quartz drifts 
found in the miocene are non-auriferous, and that the Vic- 
torian quartz reefs were not formed, or being formed were not 
impregnated with auriferous particles, until the pliocene 
period. Mr. Selwyn is, I think, too great a lover of facts not 
to duly appreciatet hisone, coming from soreliablean authority 
