Mines and Mineral Statistics. 
15 
About 2 luilos above Mrs. Anderson’s station, on Xewstead Creek, 
a deposit of tufaceous limestone occurs; it is 4 feet thick, and rests on 
calcareous clay, and lies at the junction of trap with carboniferous 
rocks. Springs issuing from those rocks are evidently the origin of 
this limestone. It is now being quarried and burned, and yields lime 
of fair quality. 
Pliocene, 
'Next in order of sequence is the basaltic trap. For the miner this 
volcanic rock has but little interest, but to its inffiience the best 
pastoral and agricultural land in the district chiefly owes its fertility ; 
a reflection that may aflbrd some consolation to those M'ho in wet 
weather deplore the existence of tlie notorious “ black soil” of Inverell, 
for, as before remarked, it is the disintegration of the trap that has 
produced this fertile soil. 
Around the township of Inverell, and in places throughout the 
whole district, the basalt formation occurs. It extends for some 
distance to the westward ; and to the south-west it forms the water- 
shed between the Gwj'dir and Maciutyre liivers. 
The basalt varies greatly in thickness. At Inverell it forais the bed 
of the Macintj're, and on the west bank attains a thickness of several 
hundred feet; while a short distance to the eastward, on tlie Aewstead 
Poad, it occurs only a few feet thick, capping a hill about 2(X) feet 
above the level of tlie river. Many other similar instances might be 
mentioned which uiai’k the uneven surface of the ground at tlie period 
of the volcanic eruption, when a flood as it were of molten basalt over- 
flowed the country. "Within the district I have examined I have not 
been able to determine any of the points of eruption whence this lava 
issued, unless the tufaceous trap of Table Top may perhaps indicate 
that liill as one, but this is doubtful. 
From what the Ilev. Mr. Clarke’s report states, it appears that the 
volcanic vents lie to the eastward. The trappean rocks are described 
as “ bursting through botli granite and porph>Ty and overflo\\ing 
them; they t'orm the culminating points of the Cordillera on the Ben 
Lomond Itange, and break out along the spurs from that range in 
various places on the Avestern falls. That they haA'e issued from the 
granite is shown very remarkably by several examples along the banks 
of the Macintyre, a little below the junction of Oiierra Creek, and 
upon the broken ranges between the head of Paradise Creek and the 
junction with the river.” 
Near the junction of Xewstead Creek with the Maciutyre the basalt 
appears to have tilled up an old valley, and th(* same features are 
noticeable further down the river, near Brodie’s Plains, and again at 
Inverell. An examination of the country to the eastward may possibly 
.show this old vallc}'’ to have been in pliocene times tliat of tlie 
j\Iacintyre, down which the basaltic lava stream poured, and damming 
it up, caused the drainage Avater to erode a fresh channel, forming tlie 
existing valley, Avhich during the succeeding pleistocene and recent 
times has not been deepened to the Ica^cI of the old valley. (See fig. 
2, a e.) 
These geological features are met AA*itli in several of the newer 
pliocene leads in Victoria, especially in the Durham load, near Ballarat, 
where the lava has flowed down a A^alley and covered up tlie bed of the 
