S53 
tHe same over wide areas in South Australia, New South Wales, and Queensland, as far 
east as the Warrego Eiver, where I have had an opportunity of examining them. The 
topmost bed of jasper rock has generally a eonehoidal fracture and amorphous structure, 
all hough sometimes containing grains of sand and pebbles, and becoming a conglomerate ; 
it also occurs as rounded fragments and ])ebblos of yellow jasper rock cemented together 
in masses with glazed surfaces. 
“ The Stony Dowms are undulating and level plains, flanking the tablelands and 
extending for miles over the eountiy, and covered with blocks and pebbles of the flinty 
jasper and other siliceous rocks, with sometimes vein quartz, slate, and sandstone ; these 
fragments of rock are scattered over the surface of the plains and rest on soft yellow and 
reddish clay loam, derived from the denudation of the underlying shales. In many 
places the ground is covered with a smooth pavement-liko covering of glazed fragments 
and pebbles, as in the Stony Desert of the Diameutlna; in others the jasper rock lies 
scattered in slag-like masses and lumps on the soft loamy surface of the plains, together 
with gravel, shingle, and fragments of agate, chalcedony, quartz, flint, &c. It is difficult 
to account for the even distribution of those gravel and rock fragments over such a large 
extent of plain surfaces, floating ice being the only agent likely to produce such results. 
Below and surrounding the tablehills and stony downs are the soft silt plains, which, 
together with the former, cover the gypseous clays, marls, calcareous shales, limestone, 
sand, and gravel drifts of the Cretaceous age.” 
The late Kov. Julian E. Tenison Woods held that the Desert Sandstone was of 
suh-ierial or seoliau origin, and was deposited in the position and at the levels at which 
it is now met with. In a Paper “ On the Hawkesbury Sandstone,” read before the 
Eoyal Society of New South Wales in 1882,* speaking of the views of Messrs. 
Darwin, Daintree, Clarke, and Wilkinson, regarding the Hawkesbury Sandstone, but 
applying his remarks also to the Desert Sandstone of Queensland, Mr. Woods observed : — 
“ One fact seems to be lost sight of in all these theories, and that is that there 
has been no upheaval. The beds are horizontal in nearly every case, and there has been 
very little alteration of level since they wore dejiosited. This is true wherever the 
formation is found, and it is a most significant fact connected with our eastern monntain 
range. The highest portions are recent volcanic, granitic, or horizontal sandstones, 
which have not been upheaved from the sea. There has been evident depression about 
such places as Sydney Harbour, but no elevation anywhere.” 
Again, in the same Paper, Mr. Woods observed: — “I do not think that the 
denudation [of the Desert Sandstone] has been very great, for most of these aerial hills 
W'ei'e never united. It used to be the custom to refer the small horizontal caps and 
outliers on the tops of mountains to the remains of an enormous formation which had 
been denuded away. I myself thought this of O’Connor’s Nob,t near Cooktown, and 
Mount Pigeonhouse, near Jervis Bay. Such stupendous denudation on horizontal 
strata, without any upheaval or subsidence, bailies comprehension ; but when the aerial 
origin of these outliers is understood, the difficulty vanishes. There has been little or 
no denudation. The sandstone has been deposited just where it is found, and was 
never much larger than we sec it now.” 
Had Mr. Woods lived to hear of Mr. Maitland’s discoveries of an abundant and 
identicalmarinofauna foundat high levels in the different fragmentary tablelands of Desert 
Sandstone, in the neighbourhood of Cooktown, I have no doubt that he would, with his 
well-known candour, have admitted the cogency of the evidence in favour of elevation. J 
* Journ. R. Soo. N. S. Wales, 18S2, xvi., p. 53. 
+ “ Connor’s Nob.” [B.L.J.) 
J I can testify that, during the severe illness from which he never recovered, Mr. Woods in a very gi-eat 
measure abandoned the aeolian theory of the origin of the Hawkesbury and Desei-t Sandstones. (It.E, J unr . ) 
