33 
After years of anxious waiting, the whole of the south east portion 
of New Guinea was taken possession of by Sir Thos. Mcllwraith in 
1883, in the name of the Sovereign, but it was not until 1888 that 
British New Guinea was formally annexed to the Crown by Sir Wm. 
McGregor, a trusted official of the Colonial Office, and who for many 
years afterwards occupied the position of Administrator. Finally the 
territory passed into the possession of the Commonwealth of Australia 
towards the close of 1901. 
It seemed to me that some account of the geology of British New 
Guinea might prove not uninteresting to the Society, the members of 
which, federation being now an accomplished fact, may claim as 
taxpayers to have a more than passing interest in our first Possession 
My own interest in New Guinea began twenty-five years ago, after 
reading D’ Alberti’s delightful work of travel, “ New Guinea — What 
I did and What I saw ; ” but it was not until the year 1891 that I had 
the good fortune to set foot in the country, when the then Queensland 
Minister for Mines, the Hon. W. O. Hodgkinson, acceded to the re- 
quest of Sir Wm. McGregor that I should be permitted to spend 
some months in the Possession. 
During my visit unusual opportunities of examining into the 
geology of a considerable portion of the country were presented. The 
Government steamer, “Merrie England,” was employed as a means of 
locomotion and a base of operations, as many instructive sections 
were best seen along the coast, these were examined by means of 
native canoes or boats, and when opportunity offered, traverses were 
made on foot for considerable distances inland. With very few ex- 
ceptions, it was found that the coastal districts and many of the 
adjacent islands were occupied with a number of extinct volcanoes, 
deposits of lavas and ashes, and more particularly on the North-East 
coast and the Louisiade Archipelago, with a large area of nearly 
horizontally bedded coral limestones, in fact, upraised reef masses. A 
large portion of the backbone of the mainland is composed of ancient 
crystalline rocks, which, wherever exposed, were seen to be either 
vertical or inclined at very high angles. These “ foundation stones ” 
of New Guinea are continuous through the islands of the D’En- 
trecasteaux and Louisiade Group, which latter forms the extremity 
of that submarine ridge which trends in the direction of the north 
island of New Zealand. 
New Guinea rests upon a submarine bank bounded by the 2,000" 
fathom line, which bank includes the islands of New Britain, the 
Solomon Group, Santa Cruz, New Hebrides and the Fiji Archipelago ; 
these islands are connected by an arm stretching so far southward as 
to embrace the Tonga and Kermadoc Groups. This large 
submarine bank, which has been aptly termed the Melanesian 
