Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 2.djvu/439

Rh species of Conchifera are found; Orthonota compressa, Pterinea macroptera, and Pachydomus globosus.

Stenopora informis, and other species of corals, are also met with, both here and throughout the Jerusalem formation generally, in which, likewise, Spiriferæ and Producta are abundantly distributed.

The seams of coal alternate with layers of clay and shale, in which Zeugophyllites and the fern Pecopteris Australis are imbedded.

Another species, Pecopteris odontopteroides, occurs in the overlying sandstone, the whole dipping to the south, and appearing again at Richmond and Tasman's Peninsula.

After passing Spring Hill, Jericho appears to the westward, backed by hills, and to the eastward of the road the vale of Jerusalem, a rich verdant-looking flat, dotted over with clumps of wood, and strikingly reminding me of some of the vales in Somersetshire. Over Fourteen-Tree Plain the road is enlivened by vast numbers of parrots, and black and white magpies. Eastward of this, the country presented a somewhat desolate aspect from the number of withered trees, some standing erect, others prostrate on the ground, and the whole interspersed with numerous charred stumps, as if caused by some conflagration in the woods.

From Lemon Springs, Table Mountain, three thousand eight hundred feet in height, is seen to the N.W. at a considerable distance.

Approaching the plain in which the township of Oatlands is situated, the country suddenly changes its appearance: gently undulating slopes of sandstone, covered with rich pastures, on which numerous flocks of sheep were feeding, supersede the wild and rugged, though picturesque, hills and ridges of the trappean rocks. To the eastward of the town is a level tract of mud, several miles in circumference, like a drained lake, having in its centre a hummock