GLACIAL PERIOD OF AUSTRALIA, BY R. VON LENDENFELD, PH.D. 45 



Tenison-Woods (1) says — " There is no satisfactory evidence of 

 a former participation in the great ice age by the continent of 

 Australia. One or two instances of grooves or striations are 

 recorded, but standing alone in so vast a territory the ice origin is 

 very doubtful." 



Howitt (2) says — " Nowhere in Gippsland have I been able to 

 detect any appearances which I could in any away refer to a 

 glacial period, analogous to that of the Northern Hemisphere. I 

 have nowhere met with grooved or scratched rocks, erratic 

 boulde'-s, moraines, or any traces of ice action." He goes on to 

 say that the ancient lake-basins near Omeo might suggest the 

 action of ice. 



Whilst these two authors do not believe in a glacial period 

 having ever occurred in Australia, Professor Tate and Mr. Griffiths 

 assert that there are such traces, but their observations are very 

 vague, and it appears that these gentlemen as well as those 

 mentioned above, had looked for glacier remains altogether in the 

 wrong places. 



Professor Tate (3) states that he found erratic boulders and 

 striated rock surfaces on the beach near Adelaide. To look for 

 glacier's one must go up the mountains not down to the sea. 



The evidence collected by Professor Tate proves by no means 

 that any glaciers had ever existed in Australia, and it is probable 

 that the erratics found by him were deposited on the beach by ice 

 bergs stranded there, which may have drifted to the South Coast of 

 Australia, from the South Pole at the time when it was colder in 

 the southern hemisphere than it is at present. 



Mr. Griffith's (4) evidence is of a still more vague character ; he 

 finds a lot of gravel and clay, and concludes that this must have 

 been formed by glacial action. Mr. Griffiths did not however, 



(1) Tenison-Woods. Physical structure and geology of Australia. Pro- 

 ceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales. Vol. VII., p. 382. 



(2) Howitt. Geology of North Gippsland, Victoria. Quarterly Journal 

 of the Geological Society of London. Vol. XXXV., p. 35. 



(3) 7\ite Anniversary Address to the Royal Society of Transactions of 

 the Royal Society of South Australia, 1878 — 1879. 



(4) Griffiths. On the Evidences of a Glacial Epoch in Victoria during 

 past niiocene times. Royal Society of Victoria, 1882. 



