10 
and found its bank lined with a series of low ridges of 
ferruginous shale or sandstone dipping away at about an angle 
of 35°. There were outcrops of a kind of coal on the banks, 
and on one of these a shaft was sunk to a depth of about 20 
feet. There was a seam of anthracite exposed about 20 inches 
thick. In appearance, colour, lustre, &c., it was as good coal as 
any from Newcastle. It was, however, of a quality that would 
not burn unless a great heat were employed, and then only with 
a dull slow kind of combustion, leaving a thick white ash 
behind, or sometimes scarcely changing by the application of 
heat. It seemed to me very like the coal in the neighbourhood 
of Port Denison, where the seams are known to be “coked” 
by sheets of lava which overlie them. I could not see any 
evidence of igneous rocks in this neighbourhood. Yet, con- 
sidering the broken character of the country and the inclination 
of the beds, I think that there must be considerable disturbance 
of a volcanic character, evidence of which will be forthcoming 
when a more detailed survey of the ground is made. 
I made a further excursion to the north from this place next 
day towards tw T o hills called The Brothers, on the spurs of which 
I was informed there were considerable outcrops of coal. I 
found the ridges of a very steep character, and outcrops of rock 
showing the nature of the formation clearly. The strata were 
composed of a coarse conglomerate of waterworn quartz pebbles 
of almost every size, cemented together by a hard, dark-brown, 
ferruginous paste, or concreted by a siliceous infiltration. Those 
who have visited the Upper Hunter Diver will not require to 
have it described. It is precisely similar in character to the 
rocks which form such conspicuous escarpments around Murru- 
rundi and at the base of the Liverpool Ranges. These thick 
beds of pebbly conglomerate form the base of the coal measures. 
They are entirely composed of waterworn quartz pebbles or 
fragments of different kinds of trap rocks. Their actual thick- 
ness is not known, but the beds of the conglomerate retain their 
character in cliffs of several hundred feet. The relations of this 
formation at the Hunter Diver are not very well known — that is 
to say, whether it rests conformably or not upon any older 
formation, or what that formation may be. There, however, we. 
may believe that it rests on older — much older — paleozoic rocks. 
The pebbles may have been derived from the denudation of these 
strata, or some of the missing links between them and the car- 
boniferous and the quartz pebbles from the quartz reefs. This 
is only conjecture, but the strata at the Normanby Diver and 
those at the Hunter may be considered as belonging to the same 
formation. It is a remarkable circumstance that such peculiar 
features as this conglomerate presents should be the same at 
places 1,500 miles apart. One would think that such an accu- 
mulation of pebbles w T as dependent upon circumstances purely 
local, and it is not easy to understand how such deep and appa- 
rently such wide-spread deposits could be formed. 
I followed up the course of these 'strata to the summit of 
