278 
the beach. The coal is a fine glossy coal with conclioidal fracture; 
different from the brown coal at Drury, and already resembling rather 
a black coal. The piece which I knocked off of one of the strata 
emerging from the sand , is lined in two directions , perpendicular 
to one another, with leaves of calcareous spar, as thin as paper, 
and is thereby divided into a number of small dice one or two 
lines in thickness. The layers, however, measuring only a few 
inches, are not thick enough to be of any practical importance. 
Above the coal bearing strata there lie gray marl-banks con- 
taining many very remarkable fossil plants. Unfortunately, the banks 
at the surface are so much broken and crumbled, that, for want 
of the necessary instruments for digging deeper, 1 only succeeded in 
collecting a few distinct pieces with very neat fossil ferns , which 
have been named Asplenium palceopteris by Prof. Unger. The top- 
most beds consist of tabular limestone, replete with foramniferae 
and bryozoes, which towards the top change to banks of a finely 
granulated, yellowish-white sandstone, which breaks in large squares 
and reminds one of the Quader-sandstone of Saxony or Bohemia; 
but which, from the fossils enclosed, we infer belongs to the ter- 
tiary formation. 
A similar section may be observed at a point lying but a few 
paces north of the spot, where we had reached the beach. Pas- 
sing northwards along the beach , one has to climb over large 
sandstone and limestone blocks , and then arrives at a vertical 
bluff, against which the surge beats, and beyond which it is im- 
possible to proceed. Amongst the rocky masses scattered here 
at the foot of the bluff, large blocks of calcareous marl of greenish- 
gray appearance are found; by breaking them with a hammer, 
a rich collection of the most beautiful specimens of fossil ferns 
may be easily obtained. Like those at the previous locality , how- 
ever, these also belong to only one species, but differing from the 
former and not corresponding to any of the species now living upon 
New Zealand. Prof. Unger has named it Polypodium Ilochstetteri. 
This locality, as well as that of the Belemnites on the Waikato, was 
formerly not known at all. Our Kuki was utterly lost in astonish- 
