PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS — SECTION C. 
59 
II.— NOTES ON RECENT GEOLOGICAL WORK IN AUSTRALIA AND 
TASMANIA. 
The detailed survey of the Charters Towers Gold Field, by Mr. R. 
L. Jack, the Government Geologist of Queensland, and his able 
assistants, Messrs. W. H. Rands and A. G. Maitland, is the most 
highly finished work of the kind ever produced in Australia, and is of 
great scientific interest, as well as of very considerable practical value. 
During the year 1894 the chief work of the geological survey of 
Queensland has been the mapping of the intake beds of the artesian 
water basin of Queensland. The chief results of this important work 
have been summarised as follows*: — 
“The basal beds of the Lower Cretaceous formation have been 
traced continuously from Yculba Creek to the heads of the Warrego, 
and have been observed on some of the heads of the Barcoo, their outcrop 
occupying a belt from five to twenty miles” [/.<?., wide — T.W.E.D.]. 
For a distance, therefore, of over 500 miles from the southern 
boundary of Queensland northwards, the area of the intake beds is 
about forty times in excess of the previous rough estimates, a discovery 
which is most encouraging for all those who are interested in the 
development of the resources of this vast artesian basin. 
Mr. Jack states that he has obtained evidence of a distinct uncon- 
formability between the base of the Lower Cretaceous rocks and the 
top of the Trias- Jura formation, a fact of great scientific as well as 
geological interest. 
At the end of last year the Royal Society of New South Wales 
awarded to Messrs. E. L. Jack and Robert Etheridge, junr.,the Clarke 
Medal, as a recognition of the value of their services rendered in the 
cause of Australian geology, especially shown in their lately 
published elaborate work on the Geology of Queensland. 
In South Australia the excavation of the remains of gigantic 
marsupials and birds of Pliocene or Post- Pliocene age is being carried 
on vigorously, whenever the season is favourable, under the auspices 
of Dr. E. C. Stirling. A summary of the results hitherto obtained 
have already appeared in “Nature.” 
During the recent expedition, fitted out by the generosity of the 
Hon. A\ r . A. Horn, to the Macdonnell Ranges, Professor Tate has 
discovered that Lower Silurian (Ordovician) rocks containing Ophileta 
or Euomphalus and OpistJtoma extend from Central Australia into 
Queensland, along the tropic of Capricorn. 
Until this discovery the oldest known sedimentary rocks in 
Queensland, the age of which was determinable on palaeontological 
evidence, were of Middle Devonian (Burdekin) age. 
A most useful paper, embodying a vast amount of patient research, 
has been contributed by Mr. Walter Howchin, on the fossil foramini- 
fera of Australia.! 
Of special interest is the first list yet published of the Palaeozoic 
foraminifera of Australia. They are all from Permo-Carboniferous 
horizons in Tasmania and West Australia. 
In Victoria, Messrs. T. S. Hall and G. B. Pritchard, following in 
the footsteps of Professor Tate and Mr. John Dennant, arrive at 
* Brisbane Courier , 1st December, 1894. 
+ Austr Ass. Avt. Sci., vol. v., Adelaide, 1894, pp. 348-373, with plates X. and XI. 
