518 
Outliers of Desert Sandstone were seen to the north of the Plinders, opposite 
Teleinon (forty miles west of Hughendeu), while I was travelling over the Eolling 
Downs in 1881. 
Tn reporting on the Cape River Diggings in 1868, Mr. Daintree wrote as 
follows : — 
“ The stratified rocks which rest uncomformably on the auriferous slates to the 
south-west, and so cut off the extension of gold-mining in that direction, are those which 
form that barren desolation, locally called the ‘ Desert,’ from which, the eastern tribu- 
taries of the Thomson and Flinders Rivers take their rise, 
“ The upper beds of this series are coarse friable sandstones, supported by thick- 
bedded conglomerates, underlayed in turn by white clays and shales, wilh inter- 
stratified layers of carbonaceous matter, but no true coal was observed. Where 
these conglomerates are seen resting on the mica-slates, as is frequently the 
case in the upper branches of Rankin’s Mistake Creek, the gullies have been 
worked, and payable gold obtained where this conglomerate forms the bottom, and 
its broken-up fragments, the ‘ wash-dirt ’ ; but as no attempt has been made to sink 
through the cement (though here very thin) the question of whether gold exists as a 
product of denudation of the old schist rocks, at this early period in the world’s history, 
yet remains uncertain. 
“ Conglomerates and sandstones of the same lithological character, and occupy- 
ing the same relative position in regard to the auriferous slates, were tested practically 
by the Gleological Survey of Victoria, in the Bacchus Marsh District, without finding 
the ‘ colour’ of gold ; here, however, is renewed encouragement to re-investigate the 
matter, as the miners in Conglomerate Q-ully found water-ieorn gold attached to small 
pieces of cement, together with free gold.”* 
In 1890 Mr. Rands made a discovery wRich will revolutionise our ideas of the 
value of the fossil Gtlossopieris in determining the horizon of the rocks in wRich it is 
found. The following quotation is from his Report on the Cape Gold Field t 
“Following up Betts’ Creek, to within about a mile of Conglomerate Gully, high 
banks of sandstone and shale are seen to the southern side of the creek. The sand- 
stone at the base is fifteen feet thick. It is a coarse w hite sandstone, with layers of 
quartz pebbles in it, like that generally met with in the Desert Sandstone rocks. Above 
this there is a layer of shale, and then alternate white and browm mud rocks. Above 
these is a bed of sandstone, and then a thiu bed of shale full of leaves. 
Above this again is sandstone. The height of the bank is forty feet. The beds are 
almost horizontal. I foi-tunately had an opportunity of submitting these fossils to Mr. 
R. Etheridge, junr., wdio pronounced them to be undoubtedly Glossopteris. From the 
character of these beds, and also from the stratigraphical position of similar beds, seen 
in the railway cuttings on the range beyond Pentland towards Hughenden, where they 
certainly overlie the Rolling Downs Formation, I would pronounce them to be Desert 
Sandstone. 
“ If this be the case, however, then the plant Glossopteris must have a much 
longer range in time than has hitherto been suspected, as it was supposed to be confined 
to the Palaeozoic rocks, or at most to range as high as the Lower Mesozoic. Mr. Etheridge 
has determined the supposed Glossopteris oi the Burrum Coal Field and of Slewart’s Creek, 
near Rockhampton, to be a form of Taniopteris.X .... 
* Report on the Cape River Diggings and the latest Mineral Discoveries in Northern Queensland. By 
Richard Daintree. Brisbane : by Authority : 1868. 
t Brisbane : by Authority : 1891, p. 10. 
t Phyllopteris. {B.E. Junr.) 
