804 GLACIER ACTION ON MOUNT KOSCIUSKO PLATEAU, 



Abandoning all hope of here finding suppoi't for Dr. Lendeu- 

 feld's "Glacial Period in Australia," I turned to the valley named 

 on Mr. Helms' map Glacier Valley. There is little to be gained 

 by describing this valley and its rocks in detail. Nothing that 

 I saw altered the opinion already expressed. Rounded rocks there 

 are, and smoothed rocks also, with contours that probably coidd 

 be produced by ice, but on a critical examination even that proba- 

 bilitv vanishes. 



There remains but one other tract on Mr. Helms' map to deal 

 with. This is the area around Lake Merewether, named Evidence 

 "Valley, I presume on the " lucus a non lucendo" principle. 

 There are many features in this tract that may require or suppose 

 the existence of ice-sheets and snow-fields, and the violent action 

 of heavy streams of water flowing under ice; but there is nothing 

 to warrant one's supposing the existence in the past of moving ice. 



Some of the individuals of the large rock masses in this valley 

 are strikingly angular. A photograph (PI. xxxviii., fig. 2) will 

 show the actual breaking up of granite into rectangular blocks by 

 natural weathering. Many of these blocks are as rectangular as 

 if hand-dressed from a quarry. The vast piles of blocks, many 

 of them of this description, between the Hedley Tarn and the 

 Snowy River, are a somewhat exceptional occurrence. I should 

 not, however, feel justified in supposing moving ice to have 

 brought these massive rocks together. Other collateral evidence 

 ought to be forthcoming of the existence of glaciers. I mean by 

 collateral evidence, such evidence as is afforded by scratches, 

 grooves, and furrows on rocks, boulder clays, angular blocks, 

 Roches Moutonnees, perched blocks, transported blocks, moraines 

 and moraine deposits. 



In accounting for the origin of masses of boulders in such a 

 region as that we are dealing with, it may be well to bear in 

 mind that the forces of disintegration and decomposition are far 

 more intense in their action here than under normal conditions. 

 We should remember, too, that we are dealing with possibly one 

 of the oldest land surfaces on the globe. The destruction by 

 weathering, including in that term disintegration and decomposi- 



