Sedimentary Formations 
56 
In other publications I have treated of them ; and since then, 
the Bingera Diamond Field lias received careful attention from 
Professor Liversidge who has described its condition accurately. 
Those found since 1SG0 have fully justified the heading of my 
notice published that year (“ Southern Gold Fields,” p. 272), — 
“ jNe\v South Wales a Diamond Countiiy.” 
Some years since I reported on the occurrence of mercury in 
this Colony; but my expectation of the discovery of a lode of 
Cinnabar has been disappointed. The Cinnabar occurs on the 
Cudgegoug in drift lumps and pebbles, and is probably the result 
of springs, as iu California. In New Zealand and in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of the Clarke River, North Queensland, the same ore 
occurs in a similar way. About 1811 1 received the first sample 
of quicksilver from the neighbourhood of the locality on Carwell 
Creek, on the Cudgegong. where the cinnabar is found. I pro¬ 
posed a full examination of that locality when 1 was in tlio 
neighbourhood in February, 1875 ; but the state of the weather 
was such as to preclude the possibility of doing so during my 
limited stay. But I was informed that the imogress of the mine 
was satisfactory. 
As connected with the drifts may bo mentioned the occurrence 
of gems of all kinds in all the rivers where auriferous deposits 
occur, and subsequent years have only served to abundantly 
confirm my statement of 18G0 as to the general distribution of 
them in the gold-bearing districts. 
Iu examining the gold alluvia at a variety of.shafts about Gul- 
gong, Home Buie, and other places in the county of Phillip, I 
was struck by three prominent circumstances which have bearings 
upon the present and future of that region. 
1. No shaft is, so far as I learned, deeper than 200 feet. 
2. {The gravels of the alluvia were composed of pebbles and 
fragments of rock common in the vicinity — derived from 
Carboniferous and underlying strata, with occasional 
fossils. 
3. The quartz pebbles were in somo cases perfectly rounded, 
in others the quartz was in fragmentary lumps, as if 
recently broken from reefs. These did not appear to oecujr 
together. 
The conclusion I drew from the latter fact was that two periods 
of destruction and one of abrasion of underlying reefs bad taken 
place at an early period of alluvial deposition. A fourth eircum- 
slanco might he commented on. In tho deposits of the shafts a 
multitude of well worn abraded lumps of jasper, silicified fossil 
wood, and semi-opal of various tints and ehalcedoniq interchanges, 
in some instances themselves decomposing, so as to exhibit tho 
fibres of the wood from which they had been formed by transmu¬ 
tation, arrested attention, and showed that either an older series 
