806 GLACIER ACTION ON MOUNT KOSCIUSKO PLATEAU, 



assuming their existence, and from my standpoint as a geologist 

 I protest against this assumption on his part. Take Dr. 

 Lendenfeld's plate of the Wilkinson Glacier (Proc. Linn. Soc. 

 N.S.W. Vol. X. PL 7), sketched from Mt. Townsend (our 

 Mt. Kosciusko). It will be noted that away to the back of 

 the range, showing as he says polished rocks " en face," he 

 makes mountains rise tier above tier. PI. xxxvii., fig. 2, is a photo- 

 graph taken from approximately the same spot that Dr. Lendenfeld 

 sketched from. It will he noted that there are no mountains 

 rising above or beyond the range across the valley, and more than 

 that I assert that standing on the very highest point of Kosciusko 

 (Mt. Townsend of Lendenfeld) and looking in the direction in 

 which the Doctor sketched, no mountains or table-lands are visible 

 abo^'e the range across the valley. In other words, the view is 

 bounded in that direction by the outline of the range, round the 

 base of which Dr. Lendenfeld asserts the glacier wound. The long 

 stretches of gi'eat mountains that appear on Dr. Lendenfeld's plate 

 as showing above the Abbott Range, when seen from Mt. Townsend 

 (our Kosciusko), do not exist. In a word, a serious difficulty in 

 the case of the supposed Wilkinson glacier, and the supposed 

 Helms glacier described as coming over Townsend, is that these 

 glaciers have no place to come from. It may be argued that the 

 plateau, which must be postulated in each case, has disappeared 

 by being denuded away. Possibly, but if these great mountains 

 and plateaux have been planed down, since the " glacial period," 

 there is little hope for the polished rocks of Dr. Lendenfeld, or 

 the rounded rocks of Mr. Helms, being preserved. Either suppo- 

 sition is fatal to the position taken up by Dr. Lendenfeld and 

 Mr. Helms. 



Before concluding I may say that, at several points on the plateau, 

 I found polished or rather smoothed faces on rocks. In every 

 instance this was due to slickenside. On the end of a ridge that 

 bounds the valley of the stream that flows from the Garrard Tarn I 

 noted a surface of several square yards of polished rock. The rock 

 was a micaeous slate, and I was somewhat puzzled to account for 

 the polish on so soft a rock. Besides, the polished surface stood 



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