hairs taste sweet; the other part is like gum to the palate. The point of attachment is not observable, and this has given rise to the opinion that it is not the product of insects. Half the weight of the substance is sugar, and one-sixth water. The remainder is classed as gum one-sixteenth part, starch nearly as much, inulin one-seventh, and cellulose about an eighth.

CHAPTER XV.

HARD ROCKS AND HARD TALK.

ACCOMPANIED by an agreeable local geologist, Horace had his geological as well as botanical rambles.

The first hill behind Hobart Town is Knocklofty. The green bossy head is bare of trees. But what a charming view did he thence obtain! The harbour lay below, with its snug little coves, into which shadows of gardens were dipping,—with its proud masted vessels, with the haunts of men by its side, and the laughing lads and lassies who paddled on its bosom. Seabirds screamed over it with delight, and land songsters raised their notes as they darted across it from shore to shore. The sun cheered it by day, the moon threw its chastening beams upon it by night. The sage stars twinkled their telegraphic communications to the ripples, that rose as if they would like to salute those watching, loving orbs.

Then a look up the New Town Valley brought such a change again. Man had gladly appropriated the charms so exposed to his gaze. How dearly had nature rewarded his service and affection! The gentle rises heaved with pleasure, revealing ever varying beauties. The plain was blooming with floral loveliness. The fields were smiling with luxuriance. The orchards, the pride of the valley, were hanging about babbling brooks, sheltering happy homesteads, and nodding over the teamster on the road.

Some of the gardens crept down to the river, and others clambered up to the forests of Wellington. There rested the village, reposing amidst garlands. The school-bell scattered groups of wayside gambollers. A distant sheep-bell sounded down the valley lazily on the still air. Here were proud mansions of wealth, and there were lowlier tenements, though not abodes of poverty. All alike were embosomed among trees, were encircled by flowers, and were fanned by healthful breezes.

From gazing around Horace turned to the rock on which he stood. It was the igneous greenstone.

'Here,' said Mr Wanfel, "the boiling, bubbling mass cut off the sandstone of Mount Wellington from the sandstone of the domain on the other side of the town.'

'What an astonishing quantity of this formation you have here in Tasmania,' exclaimed his listener. 'Few, if any, countries can boast of such a propor

tion. It exceeds in area the basalt. Of a livelier colour than its companion, it is often harder in structure, though both are worthy of the ordinary appellation of ironstone.'

'You spoke just now of the sandstone. What is that?'

'Well, as we have a good view here, I can speak of the formations better. This greenstone overflowed the sandstone here, and did not seriously affect the horizontal of the rock. But a worse foe to the peaceful existence of the sandstone was a devastating deluge, which tore huge gaps hundreds of feet in depth, and left here and there platforms or shelves to mark the shores of its ravages.'

'But what sandstone is this I find alike by the side of Mount Wellington, by the Domain, by Kangaroo Point across the harbour, and up that sweet vale of New Town?

'It corresponds to the Liverpool sandstone, and serves as the burial slab over the remains of ancient forests turning into coal. As you have heard, it is, where extra silicified, an unequalled building stone.'

'Yes, the excellence of your own public edifices is a proof of it. The finest, whitest specimens you appear to ship off to your richer neighbours of Melbourne and Sydney for the adornment of their palaces.'

'Yes, we poor Tasmanians must make something out of the golden colony across the Strait. They have shut out our produce from their market pretty well

by their newly revived old doctrine of Protection. They may grow corn and carrots, and gather apples and apricots; but they have nothing for their building ornaments like our Hobart Town sandstone, the white liver rock.'

'What fossils does it contain ?'

'They are few and far between. They must have got washed down to the claybeds below. The carboniferous claystones or mudstones are fully four hundred feet thick, and have a sufficient display of ancient life to interest the geologist. Below this again we have the limestone.'

I When at the museum, Mr Wanfel, I was surprised to find such an absence of fish in your carboniferous beds.'

'True; but you could not fail to notice the wonderful similarity of our fossils with those of the like formations in England.'

'That surprised many at home. It had been evidently considered at one time of day that, because your vegetation was so peculiar, and your animal life so peculiar, all your fossil existence should have been as strange and peculiar. There have been occasions, therefore, when this Tasmanian part of the world must have exhibited identical phases of being with Britain.'

'A shrewd guess of yours, Mr Douglas. When a clever Frenchman undertook to prove that all our Australian region had dropped from the moon, our dissimilarity to Europe must have struck the

learned. But gradually we have been urging and establishing our claim of kinship. Fossil after fossil rose up to confirm the story of our relation.'

'Indeed you may say that, since Professor M'Coy has sent to London such magnificent specimens of southern Ichthyosauri, those monstrous fish-lizards of olden times.'

'And, allow me to add, since this very sandstone of ours has revealed a Labyrinthodon.'

'Where was it found?'

'Some of us disinterred it from the Triassic quarry in the Domain, not far from the Derwent. At first only two leg bones were turned out. It was some time before we could be believed that this enormous frog-like croaker of the old world had once given his hop of a dozen feet at a time on this side of the Line.'

'Pray,' enquired Horace, 'is that limestone we saw as we came up the hill the same as that beneath your claystone and sandstone?'

'Certainly not. But we shall get a better sight in the Gerlstown Bay over the Derwent, some day.' Not long after this conversation the same couple took a row across. The limestone was being then

burned in kilns.

Ah!' cried the young man; 'you have a tilt here.' 'We have; but don't you see that black basalt between us and the river? That was the intruder.' 'But what a curious stone we have here!'