222 



THE GEOLOGIST. 



and whilst the lower thus stood out as a sort of terrace, some portions of the 

 upper strata would be left undenuded thereupon, the old wave-washed 

 rocks of a former period ; hence the second cliff and its fantastic and highly 

 picturesque configuration. This theory is strikingly borne out by the fact 

 that, wherever these Eocene beds appear, there the terrace appears also, 

 prominently noticeable, as is the outcrop of the gault from beneath the 

 chalk all round the valley of the Weald of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex in 

 England. 



The beds referred to are evidently of considerable depth, although, from 

 being situate but very little above the water-line, their extent downwards 

 cannot easily be arrived at. The upper portion, for several yards in thick- 

 ness, is composed of clay, seeming to have been re-deposited, and in which 

 few, if any, fossils are met with. Immediately below this stratum is a great 

 thickness of blue clay, in some places hardened into the compact argil- 

 laceous limestone before mentioned. Both as clay and as stone this bed is 

 literally crowded with fossils, in a state of preservation quite startling to 

 the stranger. Many of the shells retain their pristine colour, and look 

 equally bright and perfect with those of the still living mollusca thrown 

 upon the beach. Were it not for their strange and ancient shapes, it would 

 be no easy matter to distinguish between these relics of an immensely dis- 

 tant age and shells of the present day. In state of keeping, the marine 

 exuvial Eocene beds are infinitely better preserved than those which, found 

 in the raised estuary deposits near Melbourne, are regarded as scarcely, if 

 at all, anterior to the human period. 



My own experience in searching for organisms among these Eocene 

 strata, reminded me somewhat of a discovery made by the " Uncommercial 

 Traveller," — to wit, that " when at night one drunken man unaccountably 

 turned up, another drunken man assuredly turned up soon after to keep 

 the first company." What I noted being, that whenever I dropped upon 

 a fine large specimen, I, without exception, dug up another or two close 

 beside it. Not by any means, I should imagine, the result of chance, but 

 that the shells rolling along an uneven sea-bottom would naturally fall 

 into holes and hollows, and just as naturally be washed from off any ele- 

 vated positions. 



Nautili, cypridse, conidse, volutidse, dentalia, cerithidse, siliquariae, muri- 

 cidse, and bryozoa, are very common, scarcely a square yard of ground 

 being free from some of them, either perfect or in fragments. Among 

 the cypridae is that singular form Cyprcea eximia, and others of gigantic 

 dimensions. 



The great quantity of tropical species, few, if any, of which are now dis- 

 coverable in Victorian waters, suggest a variation of climate since the 

 Eocene period in this part of the world, analogous to that remarked in the 

 northern hemisphere. Nor is the great quantity of molluscous and echino- 

 dermatous, together with an almost total absence of crustacean and verte- 

 bral remains, less worthy of remark. Although the amount of life, ac- 

 cording to the former types, must have been prodigiously developed during 

 the period, but very few traces of any superior marine animals are dis- 

 cernible. In two hours, and within a space of barely twenty square yards, 

 I dug out with a common spade from fifty to a hundred distinct species of 

 shells, echinidse, and corals ; yet neither on the above nor any subsequent 

 occasion have I there met with either crustacean or vertebrated remains. 

 The absence of the latter is the more remarkable, seeing that the Cestracion, 

 common enough in Australian waters, especially feeds upon shelly mollusca, 

 and might therefore be expected to frequent a place whereat such par- 

 ticular food happened to be abundant. 



