528 
seams of coal, and on searching carefully I discovered pieces of a whitish indurated 
shale, containing indistinct plant-remains, and an undoubted fragment of Glossopteris. 
(The shales are identical with some iu the Blue Mountains of New South Males, north 
of Wallerawang, and again at Tallawmng, north of Gulgong.) About a mile south of 
this camp is a low table-topped rise, consisting of horizontal white and grey shales, 
and a cherty-loohing rock with fragments and stems of plants and traces of Olossopleris 
in situ. This rests on porphyry, which forms a series of rocky hills two miles further 
south, extending seven miles south-easterly to the foot of, and underlying, some high 
table-topped Carboniferous ranges (composed of sandstones, grits, and conglomerates, 
with silicified wood) in that direction. The Carboniferous range is about five hundred 
feet above the river.”* * * § 
I have always found it very difficult to reconcile Mr. Taylor’s observations with 
my own ideas on Lhe subject of the age of these sandstones. That the “ high table- 
topped ranges ” are denuded fragments of the Desert Sandstone I have no doubt 
whatever. Mr. Taylor naturally, while it was the almost universal belief that the 
presence of Glossopteris proved the formation in which it occurred to be Palceozoic, 
mapped the tablelaud as “ Carboniferous,” and the “ Carboniferous flange ’ still 
figures on the Map of the Colony. Since, however, Mr. Eands has detected Qlossop- 
teris in beds belonging to the Desert Sandstone, and resting unconformably on the 
Lower Cretaceous strata of the Ilolliug Downs, there need no longer be any difficulty 
in admitting the Desert Sandstone age of Mr. Taylor’s tableland. 
Mr. A. Gibb Maitland describes f the Carborough Bange at the heads of the 
Isaacs, as “ composed of a series of conglomerates, grits, and sandstones, about five 
hundred feet in thickness, which are arranged in a series of synclinal troughs, whose 
longer axes run generally north-west to south-east. The base consists of a coarse, 
somewhat felspathic grit, dipping at angles from 7° to 9° to S.W.W., the upper portion 
being much finer in grain, and made up of a fairly fine-grained ferruginous sandstone. 
Beneath these beds the upper or freshwater series of the Bowen River Beds is observable. 
The summit of the range is 1,750 feet above the level of the sea, and about seven 
hundred feet above that of the surrounding country. 
The Eedcliff Range and its outlying fragment to the north, between the heads 
of the Bowen River and Cerito Creek, consist of over eight hundred feet of rigidly 
horizontal beds, mainly of a coarse grit of well-rounded grains of silica wdth a few 
quartz and felstone pebbles. Some beds are more felspathic. The grit is white or 
yellow, but often weathers with a reddish tinge. These tablelands rest unconformably 
on the Upper or Freshwater Series of the Bowen River Coal Field. J When I first saw 
the Mount Leslie Sandstones in 1878 I doubted their identity with the Desert Sandstone, 
but a much more extensive acquaintance with that formation has long since removed 
the difficulties which I then saw. 
Mr. Maitland, § writing in 1889, observes that Mount Leslie is “ made up of 
sandstones, grits, and conglomerates similar to those forming the Carborough Range, of 
which, physically, it is a continuation.” 
Between the Sellheim Silver Mines and Mount Conway Station, the granite on 
the divide between the Two-Mile and Percy Douglas Creeks is covered in places by 
isolated table mountains, fragments of a once widespread tableland of horizontally 
* Mr. Taylor’s MS. notes, pcties me. 
t Report on Geological Observations at the heads of the Isaacs, the Suttor, and the Bowen Rivers, 
p. 4. Brisbane : by Authority : 1889. 
J Report on the Bowen River Coal irield. By R. L. Jack. Brisbane : by Authority ; 1879. 
§ Op. eit., p. 5. 
