1 82 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 



Sydney, May 27th, 1891.-— Professor" Haswell, M.A., D.Sc, Presi- 

 dent, in the chair. 



Mr. A. Meston of Queensland was introduced as a visitor. 



New members. — Mr. Fred Turner, F.R.H.S., Department of 

 Agriculture, Sydney, The Eight Rev. Dr. Camidge, Bishop of Bathurst, 

 N.S.W., The Rev. J. G. Buggy, Kempsey, N.S.W., and Mr. C. A. 

 Chesney, C.E., Randwick. 



The Chairman called the attention of the meeting to a circular, 

 copies of which were laid on the table, recently received from the 

 Department of Agriculture of N.S.W., offering national prizes among 

 other things for the best Australian Pathological, Entomological, and 

 Botanical collections submitted to the Department. 



Papers. — (1) "A Contribution to the Geology and Petrography of 

 Bathurst, KS.W.," by Rev. J. Milne Curran, F.G.S. This paper deals 

 with the geology and lithology of the country immediately around 

 Bathurst. The formations described are silurian, pliocene, and recent. 

 The igneous rocks represented are granites and tertiary basalts. No 

 vestige of the old floor on which the silurian sediments were laid down 

 remains. A microscopic examination of the granites and basalts 

 reveals some interesting structures. The granite is a hornblende 

 granite, with orthoclase and triclinic felspars. The basalt is seen, 

 under the microscope, to be an olivine basalt, with a microporphyritic 

 granular structure. The basalts show a streaming of the felspars round 

 the porphyritic augites and olivines. The following were amongst the 

 conclusions arrived at : That the granites of Bathurst are surrounded 

 by an aureole of metamorphic rocks. There is no gradation from a 

 clastic to a holo-crystalline rock. The granite is intrusive as regards 

 the surrounding slates. The slates are the oldest rock in the district, 

 granites coming next in order of time. The conclusion that the granites 

 were intrusive was not necessarily opposed to the view that the granites 

 may have been formed, as a whole, by a partial fusion of pre-existing 

 sediments. 



(2) " Remarks on Post-tertiary Phascolomyidce," by C. W. De Vis, 

 M.A., Corr. Mem. In this paper the author adduces weighty evidence, 

 based on the phascolomine peculiarities of their respective contents, in 

 favour of the conclusion that the ossiferous deposits of the Darling 

 Downs and of the Wellington Caves are not upon the same palseon- 

 tological horizon, the cave wombats, Phascolomys latifrons, P. Icrefftii, 

 and P. curvirostris, not having come into existence when the Queensland 

 breccias and Tertiaries — characterised by the presence of P. parous and 

 P. angustidens, n. sp. (herein described), — were laid down ; and secondly 

 that no living species of wombat has come down to us from the Age 

 of the Condamine beds. 



(3) "Description of anew Marine Shell," by C. Hedley, F.L.S., 

 and C. T. Musson, F.L.S. The new species, described as Eidimella 

 moniliforme, nourishes in the brackish water of the lagoon at Manly, 

 near Sydney. 



NOTES AND EXHIBITS. 



Mr. Hedley read a short note descriptive of the ova of a common 

 Sydney land mollusc, Helicarion robustus, Gould, which are somewhat 



