VoL. I. 
30 The Queensland Naturalist, 
must ranlv Avith the Tertiaries ot the other States^of tlie 
C oin m on we a I th . 
The beds in question have been formed, almost . en- 
tirely, from the wreckage of the adjacent Ipswich beds, 
and hence are so like them that lithologically it is not sur- 
prising they were not recognised as distinct. Still, as a 
whole, they are far less coherent, and much of the hardness 
of the exposed portions of the outcrops, especially in the 
case of the sandstones and pebble beds, is due simply to 
surface-hardening. The most typical rock, as Stokes 
saw, is a pale, fine-grained sandstone, looking much like an 
impure limestone, but without any calcareous matter to 
speak of. It is full of very minute spangles of W'hite mica. 
This is the leaf-bearing rock, and w'here the laminae are 
delicate enough in texture, they are loaded with myriads 
of exquisitely preserved leaves. Messrs. Green and Wearne, 
on their visit with me, obtained a fine fruit, and Mr. Hur- 
worth has obtained a few casts of shells, apparently Unios. 
The beds have not been systematically worked for fossils, 
and there is a very rich field open to anyone with time to 
spare. 
This “ Leaf-bed,” as we will call it, is underlaid by 
coarser sandstones, often beautifully ripple-marked over 
considerable areas, and occasionally so surface-hardened 
as to be easily mistaken for Ipswich sandstone. Here and 
there ferruginous beds occur, some clearly due to the 
reducing action of the vegetable matter, some merely the 
detritus ot the Ipswich. Still higher in the series is a mass 
of mottled clays, sandy enough to afford good brick-earth. 
It is of this that the Darra bricks are made. 
A very interesting set of beds is well exposed all round 
Sherwood, from the quarries near the river, all over the 
Sherwood flat, and giving good sections in the stream 
courses, the South Brisbane railway cuttings, and at the 
junction of the Oxley Creek with the Brisbane River. 
They consist of sands, gravels, and shingle beds, the latter 
frequently surface-hardened into a spurious conglomerate, 
which has hitherto been mistaken for the conglomerate 
at the base of the Ipswich. It is indeed derived directly 
from it, and only occurs in its immediate vicinity. 
The best section is at the gravel pit near the river, on 
the landward side of the Alluvium near the Carrington Rooks, 
which are of Palaeozoic age, and here consist of fine-grained 
quartzite much jasperised. The gravels are not water-sorted, 
large and small stones and sand being jumbled together, 
many of the stones lie on edge, and in places great blocks of 
the palaeozoic quartzites, and of the true Ipswich conglomer- 
ates occur, some weighing several hundredweight, and lying 
over a mile from any outcrop. Large boulders- of the 
