336 ON THE SUPPOSED GLACIAL EPOCH IN AUSTRALIA, 



Let US examine it. The granite composing these erratics has not 

 Leen described, and I am not aware that any attempt has been 

 made to trace their origin. Dr. von Lendenfeld suggests the 

 South Pole, but I am afraid it will take a more arduous journey 

 than the ascent of Mount Townsend to verify the existence of 

 granite there. All the land that has been examined at present in 

 that direction is volcanic ; and if ice-borne erratics had travelled 

 from the antarctic continent to S. Australia we should expect to 

 find them also in a,bundance in Tasmania, New Zealand, and the 

 Antarctic Islands, and that some would be volcanic rocks, which is 

 not the case. We must always distrust an attempt to explain an 

 isolated phenomenon V)y means of a wide-spread cause. If these 

 erratics had been derived from Tasmania or New Zealand, we 

 should expect that most of them would be gneiss or schist, or 

 sandstone; while granite would be rare. Large granite blocks, 

 brought down by ice, are found in preservation Inlet in New 

 Zealand, but this granite is a remarkable one, and a fragment of it 

 could probably be recognised. From Australia itself the erratics 

 could not have come if they are ice-home, because Australia could 

 not have been sufficiently glaciated to furnish icebergs. 



But are these erratics so huge that we are necessarily shut up to 

 the conclusion that they are ice-borne? I believe they are 

 described as "small," and consequently they may perhaps have 

 been conveyed to their present position by floating seaweed or by 

 means of ascidians : or possibly they may have been ballast of a 

 ship. I merely throw out these suggestions, for as I have not 

 examined the locality I cannot judge of the evidence ; but the ice- 

 berg theory is such a very improbable explanation of the occurrence 

 of erratics in the latitude of Jeryis Bay, or the North Cape of New 

 Zealand, that we must hesitate before accejjting it as true. 



3. In another and earlier paper on the same subject Dr. von 

 Lendenfeld says "Von Haast has furnished a map of the glaciers 

 of the cold period [of New Zealand] which shews that several of 

 the ice streams at that period extended down to the sea. I had 

 occasion to observe the characteristic scratches on the rocks in the 



