35 
rivers, of which the great extent of country is the Delta. Great mud 
banks, extending from ten to twenty miles out to sea, prevented 
approach except in boats.”! 
The geological pioneer of what is now British New Guinea was 
undoubtedly Mr John Macgillivray, the Naturalist, who accompanied 
H.M.S. “ Rattlesnake/’ on board of which Professor (then Mr.) 
Huxley was Assistant Surgeon, to New Guinea and the Louisiade 
Archipelago in the year 1846 to 1850. From the pen of this traveller, 
a man of true scientific insight, we have the first account of the 
geological features of a part of the coast line and some of the islands 
of the Louisiade Archipelago. 
In 1877, the late Mr. C. S. Wilkinson, Government Geologist of 
New South Wales, described a collection of geological specimens col- 
lected by William Macleay from the coasts of New Guinea. \ The 
collection contained oolitic limestone from Bramble Bay ; yellow 
calcareous clay from the Katau River ; and yellow and blue calcareous 
clay from Yule Island and Hall’s Sound. The fossils, the large num- 
ber of which were obtained from Hall’s Sound, proved to be of Tertiary 
Age, and assumed to be on the horizon of the Lower Miocene of 
Australia. 
In 1885 Dr. Haacke, the Geologist and Zoologist to the expedition 
fitted out by the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, visited the 
Strickland River, an important tributary of the Fly, but so far as I have 
been able to learn, this observer does not appear to have published 
any account of the geology of the district travelled. The specimens 
collected by the party were entrusted to the late Mr. C. S. Wilkinson, 
Government Geologist of New South Wales, who in his report* * men- 
tioned that a number of travelled boulders were obtained from a spot 
called Observatory Bend, 75 miles above the confluence of the 
Strickland with the Fly River. Amongst the pebbles were “ red and white 
marble limestone, altered slate with quartz veins (Silurian), brown 
jasperoid rock, quartz syenite, dense basalt, vesicular basalt, scoria 
and pebbles, indurated calcareous shells containing beautiful casts of 
Ammonites , and other fossils of Cretaceous Age.” These fossils were 
submitted to Mr. R. Etheridge, Jun., who recognised among them 
“ four, more or less, recognisable species, or at any rate species which 
+J. Macgillivray. “Voyage of H.M.S. “Rattlesnake.” London, 1852. 
Vol. I., pp. 179. 
4 Proc. Linn Soc., New South Wales, 1877, I., part 2, pp. 1 13. 
* Trans, and Proc. Royal Geographical Society, Australasia, New South Wales. 
Vol. III. and IV., pp. 203-206. 
