delay its production till the report for 1889 was ready, and se

The reports, revised and extended by information since obtained, are those which have from time to time appeared in the newspapers, and embraced the various geological expeditions undertaken by Mr H. P. Woodward into different parts of the colony during

The next part is a paper on the geognosy of the colony. Mr Woodward here gives a most valuable and instructive description of the physical geography of Western Australia, commencing with King Sound in the extreme north, and taking the reader all along t

The amygdaloids in many places of this wild country, which we are told, extends to the sea coast where they are mostly fringed with mangrove swamps, "split up into rough blocks which became red or black on the surface, and then present the appearance of

The Victoria district, situated at the head of the Murchison and Arrowsmith rivers has been the great centre of the mining interests of the colony, most of the work done up to the present having been in that portion lying between Geraldine and Geraldton.

"The central and eastern districts embrace the coast line between the Moore and the Murray Rivers, and include the Darling Range." The formation comprises "a range of cliffs of coralline and shelly limestones, calcareous sandstone containing Recent and

At the north bend of the Avon, veins of quartz, and rich lodes of magnetic iron yielding iron of great purity, are found.

To the eastward, we are told, the country is chiefly a large undulating plain of sand, but "more to the east the sand almost entirely disappears, giving place to large clay and loam flats with bold bare and red granite hills and extensive red clay alluvi

"A marked feature on the S.W. coast is the chain of tidal lakes and inlets and swampy alluvial deposits which follow the coast, sometimes connected with the sea, and others separated by the sand-hills. The bars across the mouths of most of the rivers ke

"The south-western division is almost identical with the foregoing until Bunbury is reached." Between Capes Naturaliste and Leeuwin, there is a line of range of crystalline rocks rising parallel to the Darling Range and flanked towards the sea by limest

Columnar basalt makes its appearance at Bunbury, and events in places as far south as Cape Beaufort. "From this point to Albany the coast has bold granite headlands, indented by a number of inlets into which the rivers draining the South coast flow, oft

Eastward the coast presents a series of bold granite headlands as far as Cape Arid, overlaid by fossiliferous Mesozoic rock, which extending far into the interior, disappears beneath Giles' Great Victoria Desert.

"From Cape Arid to the boundary of the colony, a great mass of limestone rises, presenting an almost vertical face, from 300 to 400 ft in height, to the Great Australian Bight.... This great table-land extends some 200 miles into the interior: it has no

GEOLOGY.

The next part of the report consists of a highly interesting description of the geology of the colony. Hitherto, Mr Woodward says, it has generally been imagined that the formations to be found in Western Australia were limited in number, and that the r

The Palæozoic or Primary rocks described, are the Carboniferous, Devonian, Silurian, Archœean and Metamorphic, and the Igneous rocks (volcanic and plutonic) are also dealt with. The next annual report will, if possible, contain a list of the minerals an

MINERAL WEALTH, &C.

Following upon the geological sketch is an account — partly historical, and partly descriptive — of the mineral wealth of the colony. Both have already appeared in print, in anothe