New South Wales. 
39 
ravines of the Grose and Dargan’s Creek, the one eastward and 
the other westward of the Darling Causeway traversed by the 
Western Railway Line, the slopes are studded by fantastic pillars 
sculptured by denudation and decay into imitative architectural 
forms. Similar forms cap the extension of the coast range to the 
head of the Goulburn Liver. 
This group of Hawkesbury rocks, very improperly denominated 
by some writers “Sydney sandstone” (which is not a type of the 
whole formation, and is borrowed from the first explorers, who 
had never gone far into the country, besides involving a confusion 
with the sandstones of the Sydney Coal-field of Cape Breton 
in North America), is surmounted by another group, or series 
of strata, called by me Wianamatta beds, which arc, if not in all 
places, generally conformable with underlying, pot-holed Hawkes¬ 
bury rocks (as is well seen at Myrtle Creek, near Picton), 
but are connected with the underlying group by means of shales 
holding ironstone nodules, abundant fossil wood, fish remains 
and freshwater shells allied to Unio, Cyclas, &c. These beds 
pass upwards into highly calcareous sandstones, which also 
contain plants, stems, and leaves, and cone in cone carbonate 
of iron. These harder beds also contain Entomostraca, some of 
which were long ago submitted by me to Professor Rupert Jones. 
The fishes were examined by Sir Philip Egcrton, who considers 
them to be Permian, as before stated. The last specimen of fish 
from the Pkeoniscus beds, reported by me to Sir Philip Egcrton, 
was a portion of a jaw of a fish whose teeth were of a Saurichth- 
vian type, but the learned Icthyologist considered it also to 
be Permian. 
Could I have procured the remains of fishes that have been 
reported to me from beds below the upper coal, and of the find¬ 
ing of which there is pretty good evidence, we might have been 
able to show that the same genera that we find ranging from the 
Wianamatta down to the coal measures of Newcastle, all through 
the Hawkesbury series, occur still lower. 
A Palsooniscus, found since my discovery in 1860 was exhibited 
by the Surveyor General (who gleaned alter my harvest), in the 
Exhibiton of 1875 at Sydney, and a specimen of Cleithrolepis 
found in a railway cutting on the Blue Mountains was shown by 
Mr. T. Brown, M.P., to whom it had been given by the finder 
after I had had it photographed. These formed part of the 
collection exhibited by the Mining Department. 
Whatever may be the age of the Hawkesbury and Wianamatta 
beds, they contain only patches and threads, but no seams of 
coal. In the former the coal occurs in the sandstone in little 
threads a few inches or perhaps feet long, and an inch or two in 
thickness, and such may be seen in the walls of buildings in Sydney. 
