BY REV. J. MILNE CURRAN. 803 



such an examination. The season was a fairly dry one, and a 

 number of shafts had been sunk some years ago, during a particu- 

 larly dry season, at various points on the plain in search of gold. 

 These shafts were put down in exactly the way a geologist would 

 like to have them, namely, in the "deepest ground," as it was 

 the miners' desire to get through the drifts on to bed rock, in 

 their search for gold. I was agreeably surprised to find in these 

 shafts boulders of pure quartz, quartz-porphyry, and diorite, the 

 two last-named rocks being for the most part perfectly sound, and 

 showing very little signs of decomposition. I exhibit some of the 

 boulders collected by me. They are just of the right material and 

 in the proper state of preservation to show any traces of grooving 

 or scratching — if grooved or scratched they ever had been. Take 

 this boulder of diorite, for instance, the very finest scratches 

 would be preserved here, had they ever been made. I examined 

 hundreds of stones of this sort out of the shafts from positions 

 where a geologist would have selected them, had the shafts been 

 sunk for his own particular use, but never once did I find a grooved 

 boulder, or striated pebble, or a polished surface. The stones in 

 these shafts are not angular, but, on the contx-ary, well water-worn 

 and rounded. Mr. Helms points out that polished surfaces are 

 not to be expected, nor grooves nor striaj to be looked for on the 

 gneissic granite and slate rocks, as he observes " they would not 

 retain polish or striation for any length of time." Indeed, Mr. 

 Helms' paper would lead one to lielieve that slate and gneissic 

 granite were the only rocks on the plateau. I would point out 

 that there is basalt a short distance from the top of Mt. Kosciusko. 

 There is basalt also a little to the north of Mt. Townsend. There 

 is a picrite-basalt at Lake Merewether, and quartz-porphyry and 

 diorites must be abundant from the quantities of boulders of 

 these rocks found in the shafts. Let me insist on the fact that 

 all the boulders in the shafts on Boggy Plain are water-worn; 

 even the blocks of quartz are rounded. If these water-worn 

 stones are the work of a glacier, I can only say that every alluvial 

 gold-field in New South Wales is rich in "glacial traces" — a 

 somewhat absurd, but necessary conclusion. 



