New South Wales . 
47 
months in the year, there is a deposit of black clay with such 
casts of leaves as occur in similar clay near Hyde in New 
Zealand, 
In recent visits to various gold fields of the Western districts, 
I have found plant beds of somewhat similar kind either cut by 
the shafts or distributed in the wash-dirt below the alluvial 
deposits, underlying in some cases thick masses of basalt. Such 
occur at Gulgong; at Cargo; under Bald Hill at Hill End; 
and also at Blayney. 
At Lucknow also occur deposits of branches and fragments of 
trees under the basalt, and on the Uralla Gold Field, and at 
Home Rule, on Cooyal Creek, lignite and woody matter of a 
similar kind were seen by me in the lowest deposit of the deepest 
shaft. 
No botanist is willing to declare what is the exact age of such 
deposits ; but some of the leaves are supposed to represent, 
among others, the foliage of Fag us; yet it was only in I860 that 
a beech forest was discovered, by the Director of the Botanical 
.Gardens, growing on the M‘Leay River. On comparing the 
living leaves with the impressions in the various deposits men¬ 
tioned I can see no specific identity. This want of identity 
indicates that however the plants may resemble living plants they 
cannot bo of a recent period ; and yet there are occasionally such 
close resemblances as to lead some good botanists to infer a 
recent period for some of them. 
The most remarkable instance I have examined is on the coast, 
about 42 miles north of Cape ITowe, where, at a place called 
Chouta (between Tura and Boonda), a cliff about 100 feet high, 
formed of sand and white silicate of alumina, contains beds of 
lignite charged with sulphide of iron, and which are full of pliyto- 
lites much allied to the living vegetation. From the clays, some 
of which are nearly kaolin, articles of pottery have been formed. 
It has been proved that, by distillation, a fair proportion of 
lubricating oil may be produced from the lignitiferous clay, and 
other products are expected to result from these deposits." The 
cliff is about GO feet thick from the sea to the top of the clays, 
and borings below the sea-level have shown a still greater 
thickness. 
These deposits lie between the horns of the little bay at Tura 
and Boonda, resting at one end on the highly undulating Palaeo¬ 
zoic rocks, and at the other on a mass of porphyiy. Tlic 3 r were, 
formerly, no doubt, deposited in a depression among the slopes 
of the hills, but the wearing away of the coast lias left a cliff of 
clay and sand instead of the original cliff of hard rocks. It k 
remarkable that at the south end the rocks assume the character 
of a breccia of quartz cemented by siliceous matter (probably 
like a deposit mentioned by Mr. Gould as occurring in Tasmania) 
