found near Hobart Town and Launceston. . 133 
in various directions of a new white membrane-like fungus, akin 
to that which is sometimes met with in the rotten yet symmetrical 
trunks of many of our large myrtles (Fagus Cunninghamii) in the 
dank forests to the westward of the colony, where they abound. 
Touching the mineralogical characters of the calcareous bed 
itself, they are exceedingly various. 
Its colour varies from reddish brown to greyish white ; its 
hardness from that of the hardest marble to that of chalk. Its 
structure has a fine pasty aspect, and it is porous and vesicular 
throughout, but unequally so, and it contains irregular beds, 
masses, and nodules of clay and Fuller’s earth. Its tenacity is 
great, and its fracture sharp, uneven, and splintery. It contains 
no shells, so far as I have been able to ascertain by attentive 
observation and careful enquiry ori the spot ; but it exhibits 
numerous traces, casts, and impressions of vegetable remains, and 
in many instances the ligneous fibre of twigs and roots of plants 
of a bye-gone day is preserved in the most solid portions of the 
rock, and but little changed. It contains no distinct casts or 
impressions of masses of wood of a large size that I have seen. 
Besides impressions of twigs, leaves, and roots of- plants which 
cannot be identified or determined, I recognise in it the 
following:— 
Leaves resembling the Sassafras of Van Diemen’s Land. 
A palmate leaf, noticed but not figured in Strzelecki’s work. 
The trifid fan-shaped leaf appears to have been sessile, and, 
including foot-stalk, not more than 3 or 4 inches in height. 
It may prove to be a fern, as suggested by Mr. Gunn. 
Impressions of leaves and the cast of a seed vessel like those 
of the Weinmannia. 
Part of the cast of a seed vessel like that of a Banksia. 
Impressions of leaves like a Leptospermum, of which I have also 
collected formerly a fine cast of a seed vessel. 
Impressions of leaves like those of Phebalium Billardierii. 
There is a beautifully distinct impression of an unknown leaf, 
of an oval shape, acuminated at either end, and pretty equally 
divided by collateral converging parallel veins like those of 
Plantago. 
