or manner, as the few following examples will clearly enough show : Mirmile Mirnew Walpa Chinangin Waikeroo Woorinew..... Squint-eyed. The Breaker. Ugly Mouth. There are numerous other names which doubtless arose from equally perceptible features, but being rather objectionable. I do not care to quote them. Names of places generally arise from local features, or from some occurrence vivid enough to be worthy of note. Below are a few examples by way of illustration : In the aboriginal alphabet, there are neither ƒ nor x, p¡being used for the former and k for the latter. In concluding this paper, I may venture to say that these tribes, when I first became acquainted with them, were numerically stronger, besides being physically a finer race, than any other tribes in the Colony, the abundance of easily procured and nutritious food being the main factor of this result. The white man's universal civilizing agent, rum, however, with its attendant evils, has unfortunately reduced this once athletic and numerous people, until now not a tithe of the original numbers remain, and the scanty remnant are but sorry specimens of the muscular athletes from whom they are descended. On the Waianamatta Shales. By the Rev. J. E. TENISON-WOODS, F.G.S., F.L.S., V.-Pres. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., Hon. Mem. Roy. Soc. N.S.W., Tasmania, S. Australia, &c., &c. [Read before the Royal Society of N.S. W., 4 July, 1883.] THE name of the Waianamatta beds has been given to a supposed group or series of strata which are said to lie above the Hawkesbury sandstone. The name is derived from Waianamatta Creek, the native or aboriginal designation of South Creek, which, arising from the Cut Hills, joins the Hawkesbury River near Windsor. The area of the Waianamatta basin, as it is termed in the late Rev. W. B. Clarke's "Sedimentary Formations of New South Wales," 4th and last edition, is laid down in the geological map prefixed to that work. It is there represented as being of an irregular oblong, about 50 miles long, from north to south, and with an average width of 15 miles. The basin thus represented runs nearly parallel with the coast and the Blue Mountains, at about equal distances from both. Mr. Clarke's definition.-The following is the definition of Mr. Clarke, taken from the same edition of his "Sedimentary Formations," p. 72: "Waianamatta Beds.-The Hawkesbury rocks are succeeded by another group or series of strata named by me from the Waianamatta or South Creek, which runs longitudinally through the basin which fills in the area between a surrounding enclosure of the former series, which must have been broken up in part, and denuded either completely before or during the deposit of the sandstone overlying the coal measures. The deep ravines which mark the Hawkesbury rocks give rise to rounded, smooth, undulating, softer, argillaceous strata, in the bottom of the creeks of which, and in the beds of the river Nepean or Hawkesbury, and of George's River, are marks of old erosion in the harder rocks below the argillaceous shales. Pot-holes are very common in the Hawkesbury beds, under the Wianamatta strata, where exposed at the points of junction, at some distance from the present creeks and drainage channels. Such may be traced at Myrtle Creek, near Picton, and on the Windsor Road, near Parramatta. These certainly prove a partial or general erosion before the whole series of the Waianamatta strata were laid down. The nearest beds of the latter to the underlying Hawkesbury rocks are shales, which have occasionally filled in hollows previously existing, or contributed patches forming considerable masses as well as thin layers to the uppermost Hawkesbury rocks. In this way fishes have been found at various levels in shale patches, as on the Blue Mountains, at Parramatta, at Biloela (or Cockatoo) Island, and other places near Sydney. The Waianamatta beds are, however, not all shale, for there are fine sandstones more compact and heavier than the Hawkesbury, calcareous sandstones and ferruginous nodules, bearing fishes and small fresh-water molluscs, which remind one of the somewhat similar nodules of Permian beds of Germany." It is difficult to gather the meaning of the author in this passage. He speaks of a "basin which fills in the area between a surrounding enclosure of the former series." One would imagine that the "former series" here referred to is the Hawkesbury formation, but he goes on to refer to the series as being "broken up and denuded either completely before or during the deposit of the sandstone." Clearly here the rocks referred to are paleozoic formations anterior to the coal, which must in this hypothesis have entirely disappeared, since nothing is seen of them now. Then, if the enclosure has been broken up and denuded away, it is impossible to arrange for the basin. Lastly, according to this statement, both the Hawkesbury and Waianamatta must fill up the basin. The difficulties of all these positions will be dealt with in the following paper. Mr. Clarke then goes on to speak of the fossil fish found in these shales, also of varities of iron ore, fossil wood, plant impressions, and calcareous sandstones, "which latter," he says, "form the highest levels and summits of insulated hills that attain but moderate elevation (1,100-1,300 feet) in the centre or on the outskirts of the basin, which latter is chiefly confined to the heart of the county of Cumberland and part of Camden, of which Bulbunmatta or Razorback Range and Menangle Sugarloaf are outlying relics of a once wider extended plateau.” Mr. Beete Jukes also refers to Mr. Clarke's conclusions, and coincides with them. In a paper read before the Geological Society of London in 1847 (see vol. iii-iv, p. 224), he describes these shales as 300 feet thick, lying on the top of the Hawkesbury sandstone. From these opinions, which have been followed without question by nearly every subsequent writer, we gather (1) that there is a distinct formation of shale lying on the top of the Hawkesbury sandstone; (2) that it lies in a basin on the eroded surface of the older formations between the Blue Mountains and the sea; (3) that the shale on the tops of such hills as Mount Sugarloaf, Razorback, and other hills in the neighbourhood of Campbelltown, are the outliers and fragments of what was once a plateau of Wianamatta rock. Incorrectness of these views.-Having carefully visited the localities in which the Waianamatta formation is said to exist, I have come to quite different conclusions from the late Messrs. Clarke and Jukes, and it is with the greatest respect for both these eminent and veteran geologists that I record my opinions in opposition to theirs. But it is only lately that facilities have been accessible to geologists to enable them to examine the true nature of these shales. The cuttings and tunnels in connection with the new waterworks have afforded great advantages for the inspection of the strata. I do not think that either of the two gentlemen referred to would have written as they did concerning the Wianamatta had they examined the ground with the aid of the recent excavations. The conclusions I have come to are (1) that the shales in question do not lie on the top of the Hawkesbury sandstone, but are intercalated with it; (2) that these shales, which lie on the summits of such hills as Sugarloaf, Razorback, Kenny's Hill, cannot be outliers of one elevated plateau, because they are mere seams of shale from the Hawkesbury sandstone, which occupy quite different levels in that formation; (3) that these shales do not occupy any basin in the formerly eroded rocks; (4) that both in the contained fossils and the stratification the shales are one with the Hawkesbury sandstone; (5) consequently there is no such formation as the Waianamatta. I shall discuss the evidence for these conclusions separately. 1. Shales not lying on the top of Hawkesbury sandstone.-The highest portions of the Hawkesbury rocks are quite destitute of any shales. At Clarence siding, on the railway, 3,658 feet above the sea, there is not a trace of shale, nor indeed along any of the large sections of the rocks. A few plant remains at Mount Victoria cannot be the remains of a formation such as the Waianamatta. Again, at all the sections of the sea-coast above Bulli and Wollongong the sandstone is the uppermost formation. But it may be contended that the shales were deposited in a basin and did not reach the higher summits. Mr. Clarke supposed that there was first a valley of erosion cut out in the paleozoic rocks, and the Waianamatta was deposited in this valley or trough. But throughout the sandstone we find beds of shale from 3 feet in thickness to irregularly banded grits and shales of much greater dimensions. These differ in no way from the so-called Waianamatta at Campbelltown and the neighbouring valley. Even in this valley much of the highest portions of the sandstone have no shale upon them. In every gully or watercourse the sandstone crops out, and finally sandstone without any shale upon it can be seen along the valley of the Nepean at every level from 200 up to 1,000 feet. So-called Waianamatta shale intercalated with the Hawkesbury sandstone. The evidence of this is very visible from the various levels at which the shale is found, and secondly from its moderate thickness. Along the course of the canal the cuttings reveal many irregular beds of shale. They undulate, not from upheaval but from the irregularity of the strata. Where the erosion of the natural surface has brought them within reach of decomposition, they form a mass of black soil exactly like what is termed Waianamatta. In the many sections exposed I have not been able to find a single instance of Waianamatta shale which was not clearly intercalated between the sandstone strata. The tunnels have all manifested the same fact. If the Waianamatta were one formation filling up a basin of the eroded Hawkesbury sandstone, the tunnels and shafts should reveal in some portion of the valley strata of shale of some considerable thic ness. I examined the materials of all the shafts. Sandstone predominated, with beds of shale of varying thickness like all the Hawkesbury rocks. What is called Waianamatta shale is a regularly stratified rock, horizontally disposed, with fine calcareous lines of stratification or an alternation of blue grey and blackish lines. On the planes of bedding there are plant remains and a good deal of silvery mica. They are jointed, and the joints have a fine calcareous facing. Now this is exactly the character of nearly all the shales which run through the Hawkesbury rocks. The latter may be always known by its white appearance where fresh quarried, yellow and red where weathered, and by the false bedding. This is a universal character and a most distinct one. The rock of the Hawkesbury series is always false bedded, the shales never. In the Sugarloaf Hill referred to by Mr. Clarke, shafts have been sunk and a tunnel cut right through it. There are many beds of shale of varying thickness but sandstone (very carbonaceous) with some false bedding predominates. The usual character of these hills is best seen from the following records of the strata passed through in five shafts along the Nepean tunnel. Shaft No. 1, 631 feet above sea-level. round grains ... Shale, with plant impressions |