The two coal mines at present worked in Tasman's Peninsula, are situated on the west side of Norfolk Bay. In the older mine I descended a shaft twenty-six fathoms deep, sunk in the vicinity of some columnar trap. The coal-seam, from four to six feet in thickness, appears beneath a bed of overlying sandstone, having a greenish tinge. Low and narrow tunnels have been worked to a distance of three hundred feet from the shaft; with the usual swampy muddy floor I have observed, in the coal mines on a larger scale, in the North of England. Sixty men are employed in this mine, and the average quantity of coal daily raised from the pit, amounts to forty chaldrons. In the mine last opened, situated near the beach, the coal which is of better quality is so near the surface that a straight tunnel has been excavated through it horizontally, to the distance of forty-seven yards. It has not yet been worked to its entire depth. The same kinds of fossil plants and wood occur in the two mines, with the sandstone super-incumbent, as at Richmond, &c.
The accompanying rough pen and ink diagram, may convey a better impression of the appearance of the fossiliferous argillaceous formation at Eagle Hawk Neck, than any written description.
