d flat
conchoidal fracture. This stone, though so compact in the recent
fracture, has distinct traces of stratification on the decomposed
surface, which is of a dull reddish hue. Bright red ferruginous granular
quartz (Eisen-kiesel ?) with a glistening lustre, and a somewhat porous
texture. A specimen of the soil of the hills at Cygnet Bay, consists of
very fine reddish-yellow quartzose sand. A large rounded pebble,
consisting of ferruginous granular quartz, of a dark purplish-brown
colour, and considerable density, was found here; near a fireplace of the
natives, by whom it is used for making their hatchets; with a fragment of
a calcareous incrustation, like that of the west coast hereafter
mentioned.

The next specimens in Captain King's collection--a space of more than
three hundred miles on this coast not having been examined by him--are
from MALUS ISLAND, in Dampier's Archipelago (see Narrative volume 1) they
consist of fine-grained greenstone, and what appears to be a basaltic
rock, of amygdaloidal structure.

DIRK HARTOG'S ISLAND, west of Shark's Bay. A compound of rather
fine-grained translucent quartzose sand, cemented by carbonate of lime,
of various shades of reddish and yellowish grey. This stone has in some
places the structure of a breccia; the angles of the imbedded fragments,
which are from half an inch to two inches in diameter, being very
distinct--but in other parts, the fracture exhibits the appearance of
roundish nodules, composed of concentric shells--or bags as it were, of
calcareous matter, which vary in colour, and are filled with a mixture of
the same substance and quartzose sand: and the spaces between these
nodules are likewise occupied by a similar compound.*

(*Footnote. The following description given by the French naturalists of
the rocks at Bernier's Islands, was probably taken from a large suite of
specimens; and M. Peron states (1 page 204) that it is strictly
applicable to all the adjacent parts of the continent, and of the islands
that were examined by the French voyagers:

Le sable du rivage (de l'ile Bernier) est quartzeux, mele d'une grande
proportion de debris calcaires fortement attenues. La substance de l'ile
meme se compose, dans ses couches inferieures, d'un gres calcaire
coquillier, tantot blanchatre, tantot rougeatre, depose par couches
horizontales, dont l'epaisseur varie de 2 a 8 decimetres (7 a 11 pouces)
et qui toutes etant tres uniformes dans leur prolongement, pou