182 
[IV. — STRATIGRAPHIC AL NOTES ON THE LOCALITIES 
MENTIONED IN T1IE SECOND PART OF THIS WORK. 
In Baron von Ettingshausen’s original Memoir, most of the species from 
the New England district are quoted as from “ Vegetable Creek.” As a 
matter of fact, the specimens in question were collected under the imme- 
diate superintendence of the Government Geologist, and Mr. Geological- 
surveyor T. W. E. David, B.A., &c., from three localities in that district, 
and representing two distinct horizons. In the hurry attending the despatch 
of the collection to Graz, the necessity of providing Baron von Ettings- 
hausen with this information appears to have been overlooked. The publi- 
cation, however, of Mr. David’s “ Geology of the Vegetable Creek Tin-mining 
District,”* not to speak of the desirability of referring the plant remains 
to their correct horizons in the series, renders it imperative that some more 
extended and definite information than “Vegetable Creek” simply, should 
be added. 
With regard to the general geology of the Vegetable Creek District, 
Mr. David remarks, “ During the greater part of that vast period of timet the 
surface of the land was being slowly broken up, and worn down by the action 
of rain, frost, sunshine, vegetation, and perhaps marine erosion, until a land 
surface was evolved, which in its broad features resembled the present. Vast 
thicknesses of sedimentary material having been removed by these means, the 
underlying crystalline rocks were laid bare, and, erosion proceeding still 
further, the crystalline rocks themselves and their metalliferous veins became 
disintegrated, and their materials transported and redistributed by water. 
The intensely worn surfaces of the pebbles in this gravel, and 
the fact that only the hardest and most indestructible minerals, as quartz, 
tin-stone, and gem-stones, &o., have survived in them, shows that they must 
have heen subjected to a long process of battering and bruising 
The only power in Nature capable of doing such a work is the sea, where it 
* Geology of the Vegetable Creek Tin-mining Field, New England District, New South Wales, with maps 
and sections (Department of Mines, Geological Survey of New South Wales), pp. 10 and 169, 4to, Sydney, 1887- 
f Prajtertiary. 
