COAL FORMATION. 483 
tacea, and the remains of Conifere allied to recent pines. The simple- 
leaved Glossopteris Browniana constituted more than four-fifths of all 
the vegetable remains at the localities examined. ‘The leaves are 
beautifully preserved in the clayey layers, and the black colour con- 
trasts handsomely with the light tint of the clay in which they are 
imbedded. They give the rock a schistose structure. Large slabs 
may be broken out, covered with the black leaves, and these slabs 
may often be split for the same reason into lamine as thin as a wafer. 
Besides this species, four or five others of the genus Glossopteris 
were collected, a compound-leaved fern (but of rare occurrence) of 
the genus Sphenopteris, leaves that have been referred to Zeugophyl- 
lites (or Noeggerathia), a species of Phyllotheca, and some confervoid 
fossils ; in all, exclusive of the Conifer, not over twenty species. In 
the examinations of Strzelecki, the same genera were observed. 
The investigations since more extensively made by the Rev. W. B. 
Clarke, have brought to light many others, and he reports the dis- 
covery of Sigillarie, Stigmariz, and Lepidodendra.* 
The remains of Conifers occur in fragments, disseminated through 
the sandstone layers, especially the inferior of the series. ‘These frag- 
ments are of all sizes from a few inches to many feet in length, and 
occasionally large stumps are met with: they are usually more or less 
flattened, the shorter diameter being but a third or one fourth the larger. 
The masses are generally a siliceous clay ironstone, of a brownish-red 
colour. Many are simply silicified or agatized, and others are partly 
siliceous and partly carbonaceous. The examinations of Wm. Nicol, 
Kisq., have determined satisfactorily their coniferous character.t 
At the Newcastle cliffs, on the platform of rock at the water’s edge, 
many of the fragments of wood are six feet long and a foot broad. 
Similar fragments are seen along the surface of the cliffs, with their 
ends extending out for a few inches. In Illawarra, on Point Tow- 
rudgi, two and a half miles north of Wollongong, there are fragments 
twenty inches in diameter, which, though siliceous, are black in 
colour, (owing to some contained carbon,) except when bleached in 
consequence of exposure; they give out a bituminous odour when 
struck with a hammer. At Bulli, similar fragments are not uncom- 
mon: they are also abundant at Keelhogue and throughout the Illa- 
warra coal region. On the side of the road west of Wollongong, near 
* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. of London, No. 13, 1848, p. 60. 
t Fourth Rep. Brit. Assoc. p. 660, and Jameson’s Journ. xvi, 137, 1834. 
