220 
THE GEOLOGIST. 
COLONIAL GEOLOGY. 
LEAVES FROM MY AUSTRALIAN NOTEBOOK. 
BY THOMAS HAEEISON, OF MELBOUENE. 
NO. II. — THE EOCENE BEDS OF SCHNAPPER POINT. 
To my mind, the very prettiest of Victorian watering-places is that 
known as above. It is so, not from brick-and-mortar embellishments, but 
because still left as made by nature. Nothing can be more striking than 
the contrast which this quietest of all quiet spots presents to the hurry 
and bustle incidental to the Victorian metropolis. Reaching the pier, a 
quaint-looking structure admirably matching the scenery around, one 
seems to have actually gone backwards twenty or thirty j'ears in Australian 
history, and to be gazing on a scene such as Melbourne itself may have 
presented ere gold discoveries had revolutionized the colonies. 
Even when regarded from the steamer, miles away, the view is especially 
prepossessing. Not distinguished by any very grand features ; the hills 
swelling into gentle heights, thickly timbered and dotted at intervals with 
villa residences peeping from out lawn-like clearings ; the cliffs of diverse 
colours, as formed by the wearing away of granitic or sandstone tongues 
of land ; and the numerous little coves and miniature inlets, of which the 
doubling every fresh headland gives some novel view, form a bit of scenery 
half-countrified, half-maritime, as especially pleasing to the Australian, as 
are Herne Bay, Margate, or the Isle of Wight, to the London cockney. 
Geologically, the district to be noticed forms a sort of irregularly- 
shaped basin, bounded on the north and south by the granitic masses of 
Mounts Martha and Eliza, on the east by a considerable patch of Silurian 
rocks, and on the west by the land-locked bay of Port Phillip ; the whole 
having been filled up with Tertiary strata, of which the surface-rock is 
probably of the Pliocene period. 
Two miles northerly from the pier, and at the foot of a spur running 
from Mount Eliza, a small bed of Carboniferous shales are plainly visible 
at low water. These contain fragments of plants peculiar to the Victorian 
Carboniferous period, which appears to have been not earlier than the 
Oolitic era. The situation of this small outlier gives the beds some little 
interest. Most of the Victorian coal-bearing rocks occupy a district form- 
ing a broad stripe some thirty miles wide, and extending from near Cape 
Otway to Gipps Land. Carboniferous strata crop out extensively around 
Geeloug, and are known to exist, as underlying beds, over the whole 
peninsula of Bellarine (a district marked on the map by diagonal lines 
alternately dotted and black, and sloping towards the right) ; whilst the 
same strata, commencing on the eastern shores of Western Port, form the 
coal district of Cape Patterson, and run, with but few breaks, under the 
principal part of South Gipps Land. The question, therefore, naturally 
arises, as to whether the strata of Schnapper Point and Bellarine were not 
once continuous ? If so, unless formed by denuding agencies. Port Phillip 
Bay must be the result of a fault of depression, caused, it may be, by the 
chasm left on the vomitting forth of vast quantities of basalt over the whole 
of south-western Victoria during the Tertiary period. 
As bearing in some degree upon this subject, the sinking of the district, 
I may notice that the aborigines speak of a time when the river Yarra 
