4 Coal Basin of New South Wales. 
sea. The cliffs near Newcastle are precipitous, and the 
“Nobbies” standing at the mouth of the Hunter has an 
especially escarped appearance, but nothing, not an absolute 
bowling-green, can be flatter than the country bordering 
the same river as far as Maitland. The whole is one wide- 
spread plain of fertile alluvial, out of which rise a few 
rounded hillocks of carboniferous rocks left undenuded. A 
more striking contrast to the country near Hartley can 
scarcely be conceived. The two districts severally display 
examples of one and the same geological formation, acted 
upon by different natural forces. The results witnessed are, 
as I think, precisely what the student of geology may expect 
to find under the circumstances of the case. 
THE STRATA. 
The rocks spread over the whole of the districts described 
have a strong family likeness not only to each other but to 
similar deposits in Tasmania and in Victoria. With our- 
selves the lower beds of the series do not appear to have 
been reached, but in Tasmania, in consequence of great 
volcanic disturbances, the entire group can be examined from 
top to bottom. We have, for instance, near Hobart Town, 
in a descending order, sandstone with coal seams and shales, 
claystone and limestone full of fossils. In New South 
Wales, near Sydney, and in the centre of the deposit nothing 
but sandstones are visible ; but at Newcastle the edge of the 
basin towards the north, and at Wollongong the like 
edge towards the south, the equivalent of the Tasmanian 
limestone is met with, similar in position, at the bottom of 
the series, containing fossils in every respect like those in 
the Hobart Town beds, only that it appears to be much less 
calcareous. Coal, however, appears to lie at a greater depth 
in the New South Wales than in the Tasmanian basin, since 
in the latter no seams of coal or even of coal shale are dug 
below where the claystone—400 feet in thickness—com- 
mences, whilst at Newcastle coal is profitably worked only 
a, few feet over, 1f not actually below, portions of the lime- 
stone itself. 
At Hartley only a very few shafts and borings have been 
attempted ; the series has not, therefore, been examined to 
its entire depth j in this locality. Only a few miles further 
west, however, granite is found to crop out, and to form the » 
base of hills, the tops of which are of the generally prevalent 
