386 
Jukes on Australia. 
On the opposite side of Norfolk Bay is a small peninsula,about 
three miles across, in which is a large convict-station called The 
Mines. The mass of this piece of land consists of sandstone with 
some trap, but immediately at the back of the station is a small 
colliery. A bed of coal of slight thickness and extent is here 
worked. The following was the shaft-section, as given me by the 
overseer:—• 
Yards ^ 
“ Ironstone” (a fine-grained trap rock) - - 20 
Sandstone -------20 
Sandstone and shale - - - - - 10 
Coal.U 
This coal, which in the deepest part is about seven or eight feet 
thick, rises pretty rapidly in every direction from that point, and 
as it rises, it thins out to about two feet. It thus forms a small 
basin, not half a mile across, and its outcrop is everywhere co¬ 
vered by beds of loose sand. A little beyond its outcrop on the 
sea-shore was the following section;— 
Yards. 
Trap (in small prismatic pieces) - - - - 7 
Sandstone, formed of grains of some trap rock - 18 
Sandstone, soft and rather shaly - 6 
Shale and bind - -- -- -- 2 
Coal.Oi 
Near this spot they had bored to a farther depth of nearly 100 
yards, and passed through one twenty-inch coal; but the rest of 
the mass was almost entirely sandstone. I got from these coal- 
measures fossil plants, among which were Pecopteris Australis, a 
Sphenopteris, and a Zeugophyllites. 
There are other places in Tasmania where coal is worked, but 
they are chiefly detached and isolated spots separated by green¬ 
stone ridges one from the other. I was not able to visit any other 
of these localities, but I should fear that the beds of coal in Tas¬ 
mania are comparatively insignificant in an economic point of 
view, that the true coal-measures of the country have no great 
thickness, and that the seams of coal contained in them are but 
partial, thickening and thinning out perhaps along the same hori¬ 
zontal lines, and thus forming limited cakes rather than regular 
persistent beds. 
