574 president's address. 



Victoria, and New South Wales they are well re[)resented, and 

 ill New Zealand the Te Anau and Reef ton Series of Sir James 

 Hector* are referred by him to the Devonian Period. 



In Victoria rocks of Lower Devonian and Middle Devonian 

 Age rest luiconformably upon Upj)er Silurian rocks, and in turn 

 are capped by strongly unconformable strata of Upper Devonian 

 or Lower Carboniferous Age. 



A. Lower Devonian. — The Lower Devonian rocks consist 

 chiefly of a volcanic series, the Snowy River Porphyries. These 

 consist of felstone porphyries, felstone ash, and agglomerates, the 

 upper 2000 feet being tuffaceous and the lower 1000 to 1500 feet 

 being chiefly massive felstones. This series is 20 miles wide, 60 

 miles long, and attains an altitude of GOOO feet near the Cobberas. 



This volcanic seriesf is situated over a meridional fissure, on 

 which a series of volcanoes was built up in Lower Devonian time, 

 comparable on a small scale to the Andes of South America. As 

 the denuded stumps of these volcanoes now rise over 6000 feet 

 above the sea, their original summits must have been far higher. 



That the volcanic series is older than part at all events of the 

 Middle Devonian Epoch is proved by the fact that the Buchan 

 and Bindi Limestones of Middle Devonian Age occupy areas of 

 erosion in the volcanic series. | § 



No rocks analogous to the Snowy River Porphyries are known 

 in New South Wales, unless the felsites of ^Major's Creek, near 

 Braid wood, 1 1 may be referred to a similar horizon. 



It may be noted that in Lower Devonian time fractures of the 

 earth's crust took place in Eastern Victoria parallel to the meri- 

 dional folds of the southern half of the New South Wales Main 



* Loc. cit. pp, 79-80. 



+ f. Howitt, quoted by Murray, loc. cit. p. 51. 



% Murray, loc. cit. plate facing p. 51, and pp. 51-56. 



§ A. W. Howitt, Report Austr. Assoc. Adv. Sci. , Metamorphic Rocks of 



the Omeo District, Gippsland. Sydney, 1888. p. 209. Geological Survey 



of Victoria, Progress Report, iii. p. 181. 



li Annual Report, Department of Mines. Sydney, 1892. p. 121. 



