’283 
May 31, 1910 The Queensland Naturalist. 
to the hats or slip off the slopes. Yet up those slopes you 
needs must climb would you see fair Roseuood light. 
Then from the heights, 3^11 notice th.at the country is a 
basin, not flat-bottomed, but crinkled into tortaous ridges 
so that the new railway line to Marburg looks as if traced 
inion the gyrations of a ptippv chasing ns tail. A’way 
upon the horizon rises the beautifully-fretted rim of the 
basin-the old paleozoic and crystalline rocks which form 
the double rampart of the ranges. The rocky infilling of 
the basin is of Trias-Jtira age, the so-called Ipsumh &e les, 
a mass of sandstones, clays, and shales with, in this locality, 
at least two good coal-seams. All these beds aie of fieMi- 
water origin, the silted up relics of vast lagoons. Ihey 
have been gnawed and battered by the ueather of ages 
into the knots and spurs which give beauty to the lands- 
CeWe and in late Tertiary Times the greater part yas drowned 
in the limpid floods of molten basalt, Avhieli, m its turn, has 
become the victim of the everlasting war of tlie^ elements. 
Hence the basalt, for the most part, caps the ridges, often 
as bluffs, and adds much to the pictiiresqueness of the scene. 
Thus, if we go northwards from the railway station 
towards tallegalla, we pass over nearly horizontal shaly 
and loamy beds, in which rounded masses of segrepted 
sandstones and ironstone occur in hrokp hues. At the 
Glencoe Collierv we can penetrate by the sloping adit a 
hundred feet below ground, intersecting two good beds ot 
coal each over five feet in thickness. Coming to grass and 
continuing our route the land rises more steeply ; p are on 
harder beds of sandstone with much ironstone ; finally we 
reach the basalt, and may tarry to gather limpid crystals 
of chabazite encrusting the black igneous rock, and lining 
its cavities. . „ , ,i n • £ 
Avvav to the 'oOiitli the land is all low, the alluvium of 
the Bremer River, hut I more than suspect the tmigh ruddy 
and black clays lielong to what T have provisionally dubbed 
the Brisbane Tertiaries. 
The whole area was, 20 years agone, covered with dense 
scrub, patches of which, delightful dryad haunts, sti 1 happily 
exist. This scrub is the parent of the rich soil that has 
made thi. district famous for its dairy produce. Bp if 
the relics of the scrub be not preserved, ichabod will have 
to he written upon the land. Already, owing to the 
abstraction of moisture, the soil has settled down; you 
can measure 0 inches of settlement at the schoolhouse. 
Already the rainfall has diminished by nearly a half, as the 
original settlers assure me. Already the storm clouds fail 
to halt upon the ridges as of yore, and S}ieed them over the 
hills and far away. Nature is very bountiful, hut even’ her 
gifts are exhaustible ; she only asks her poor relic of .ffcrub 
be saved to her upon the crests of the hills ; if this be Hot 
vouchsafed — well, even her hand will he stayed. 
