Series seems to occur right through Kent, at all events through the eastern division.

6. That the higher and estuarine members (4, 5) of the same series occur only in the western and central parts of the county.

7. That the pebbles (B) at the bottom of the Oldhaven Beds (except at Upnor, where there is a little sand (a) below) are constant, being, however, locally replaced by brown iron-ore in some places near Canterbury.

8. That in West Kent this series lies irregularly on that below, whilst in the greater part of East Kent the junction of the two shows an accidental conformity, although the higher parts of the Woolwich

Beds are absent.

9. That it is the lowermost part of each of the three sets of beds which is the most constant, whether from the denudation of the higher parts, or from their more local deposition.

10. That the true basement-bed of the London Clay is also constant, though but poorly represented in East Kent, and that its character depends on that of the underlying beds: thus, in Berkshire, where the latter consist of clays and sands, it is a loam (mostly with pebbles); on the south-east of London, in the neighbourhood of the thick pebble-beds, it is a clayey pebble-bed; and in East Kent, where the London Clay is underlain by sand, the lowermost foot or so of the former is sandy.

11. That the higher divisions, the Oldhaven and the Woolwich Series, are transgressive over the Thanet Beds, and occur as outliers on the Chalk at or near its escarpment; so that what has been thought to show an unconformity between the Chalk and the Tertiary system would seem rather to be the result of an unconformity in the lower part of the latter. To prove the existence of the first-named unconformity it is needful that the lowest Tertiary bed, the Thanet Series, should be present; and I think it has been shown that where it is present (in Kent) there is as yet no stratigraphical evidence of unconformity between it and the Chalk: palæontologically there is a break, and from the examination of a larger tract of country we may perhaps see some signs of the unconformity which that break leads us to expect.

EXPLANATION OF PLATE XXII.

(Illustrative of the "Lower London Tertiaries" of Kent.)

The vertical sections in the Plate very likely do not show all the changes in the beds; but I believe that they show the most important and the best-marked. Full details cannot be given until various Geol. Survey Memoirs are written. The small letters and numbers are the same as those of the respective beds in the text.

No. 1 is made up from the many fine sections in the Canterbury and Reculvers district.

No. 2 is meant simply to show the local thickening of the pebble-bed (3) at Shottenden Hill.

No. 3 is an abstract of a few sections near Sittingbourne, and has been partly drawn with the help of my colleague Mr. Hughes.

No. 4 is a generalization of the great Upnor sections.

No. 5 is made from some road-cuttings and pits on the Cobham hills.

No. 6 is also made up from various sections.

No. 7 is a section of the ballast-pits at Charlton.

No. 8 is from the great brickyards at Loam Pit Hill, the beginning of the sandy pebble-bed (3) being introduced from the new railway-cutting just east of Lewisham.

The others have been drawn to show what takes place westward of Kent. No. 9 is a generalized section from the London wells.

No. 10 is a general section from the London Clay to the Chalk in Berkshire &c.

No. 11 shows the westerly thinning of the London Clay and the Reading Beds, which I have shown to bring the Bagshot Sand within 20 feet of the Chalk in Marlborough Forest. (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. vol. xviii. p. 258. In the diagram at p. 263, what are here called Oldhaven Beds are included in the Woolwich Series, see above, p. 414.)

No. 12 is purely imaginary, being meant to show what we might see if the London Tertiary District reached a few miles further west than it does, when, from the thinning of the London Clay and Lower London Tertiaries, it is very likely that the Bagshot Beds would rest at once on the Chalk.

The transverse section is simply a diagram to show the way in which the Oldhaven beds are transgressive over those below, until at last they rest on the Chalk. Of course this section is greatly exaggerated vertically.

APRIL 11, 1866.

The following communications were read :

1. On the Examination of BROWN CANNEL, or PETROLEUM, COALSEAMS at COLLEY CREEK, LIVERPOOL PLAINS, NEW SOUTH WALES. By W. KEENE, Esq., F.G.S., Senior Examiner of Coal-fields of New South Wales.

(In a Report to Michael Fitzpatrick, Esq., Under-Secretary for Lands, Sydney.) [Communicated by Sir R. I. Murchison, Bart., K.C.B., F.R.S., F.G.S.] ALREADY acquainted with the succession of deposits visible in the various natural sections on the line and in the vicinity of the Great North Road, so far as Aberdeen, I was desirous of working out the geological position of the Brown Cannel Coal (specimens of which had been sent to me from Liverpool Plains), so that I might be able to judge of the probability of success in any search for this coal in the district of the Lower Hunter. I therefore went to Colley Creek, the station of Mr. Loder, and this gentleman at once offered to accompany me and point out the places whence he had taken specimens identical in appearance with the Brown Cannel I had seen from Hartley.

From an examination of the rocks, I was able to determine that the geological position of this Brown Cannel is below the coalseams worked in the Newcastle field-that, in fact, it forms the very base of our Coal-measures, and in such close contact with the porphyries that these latter are absolutely mixed up with the lower portion of the Cannel. I found two seams of workable thickness, tilted at a high angle, running north and south, not far from, and parallel to, each other, both of the same quality.

I was the more desirous of determining the geological position of

this coal, because a large piece from a block of Brown Cannel was given to me a short time ago, which had been brought up by the buckets of the dredge working on the Hunter River, at the shallow known as Eales's Flat, near Morpeth. On my return to Newcastle, and with the knowledge acquired in my examination at Colley Creek, I went to Eales's Flat, and had the place pointed out to me where the dredge had been working; and it is remarkable that I found it to be on the line of upthrow of the porphyries from the Williams River range (which I had long ago traced across the Hunter, near Morpeth), being the extension of the well-known Porphyry Point, the residence of the late Dr. Carmichael. I therefore conclude that the piece brought up by the dredge, although a loose block, must belong to a deposit not far distant from the place where it was found; and research will probably lead to the discovery of the

seam.

Geologists have defined that, of Cannel Coals, jet is an extreme variety in one direction, as batt or carbonaceous shale is in another; and the specimens which I send will show you that we possess these varieties.

I have taken the specific gravities of various specimens; and the richness in oily products will probably be found to decrease with the augmentation in specific gravity, the heaviest leaving the greatest amount of solid residue after distillation. The Hartley stands first as of the lowest specific gravity; that from Lake Macquarie, a coarse jet, is the heaviest (having a specific gravity of 1·5); and that from Colley Creek shows but little difference from the famous Boghead Coal of Scotland, of which I am also able, through the kindness of Mr. Donaldson, to send you a specimen :

Lake Macquarie..

1.064

1.160

1.166

1.190

1.289

1.560

1.158

Chapapote or Mineral Bitumen from the Cretaceous rocks
of the south of France

Our ordinary coals vary from 13 to 1·4.

The small excess in the specific gravity of the dredge-specimen over that of Colley Creek may be attributed to long contact with water; it otherwise looks of good promise as a Petroleum Brown Cannel, and, like that of Hartley, ignites readily in the candle-flame.

The specimens, with the exception of the Chapapote, are all true massive Cannel Coals; and to call them "Shales" is to misname them.

Besides Colley Creek, I heard of specimens having been picked up in other creeks, at many distant places, particularly on the Warrah Station; and I can have no doubt that Brown Cannel will be found where the porphyries have tilted up the Lower Coal-measures so as to render them accessible to the miner. The Boghead Coal of Scotland is likewise found low down in, if not at the base of, the Carbonife