ere is some confusion
in the formation. The rocks, however, that prevail are trappean.

FOSSIL SHELLS.

In digging a well there, a fossil cowrie (Cypraea eximia) of an extinct
species was once found at the depth of sixty feet. Another specimen of
the same shell was dug up at Franklin village near Launceston, from a
hundred and forty feet below the surface of the soil. Count Strzelecki
gives a figure of it in his interesting work.

Mr. Ronald Gunn, in his observations on the flora of Geelong, observes
that out of a hundred species of plants collected indiscriminately,
sixty-seven were also to be found in Tasmania, leaving only thirty-three
to indicate the peculiarities of the Geelong vegetation.

Some of the officers of the Beagle exhibited at this place symptoms of
being infected with the land-speculating mania we had witnessed at
Melbourne, by bidding for some of the allotments of the township of
Geelong, which were just then selling. One that was bought for 80 pounds
might have been sold a year afterwards for 700 pounds. I mention this
fact that the reader may see what a ruinous system was then in vogue.

ARTHUR'S SEAT.

On the morning of January 5, we left Geelong, touched at Hobson's Bay for
a chronometric departure, and proceeded to sea by the south channel.
Arthur's Seat is a good guide for its entrance from Hobson's Bay, the
channel passing close under the foot of it. The eastern extremity of the
northern banks, we found very difficult to make out, from the water being
but slightly discoloured on it. It is, moreover, on account of its
steepness, dangerous to approach. From this eastern corner of the bank,
Arthur's Seat bears South 50 1/2 degrees West and a solitary patch of
cliff, westward of the latter, South 68 degrees East.

In consequence of bad weather it was three days before we passed through
the channel, which, we were pleased to find navigable for line of battle
ships. A West 3/4 North course led through, and the least water was five
fathoms on a bar at the eastern entrance, where the width is only
three-tenths of a mile, whilst in the western it is one mile, with a
depth of seventeen fathoms. When in the latter we saw Flinders Point
between Lonsdale and Nepean Points, and as we came down the channel, the
last two points were just open of each other.

PORT WESTERN.

Leaving Port Phillip, we surveyed the coast to the eastward, and anchored
in the entrance of Port Western, after dark on the 10th.