BY CAPTAIN F. AV. HUTTON, F.G.S., &C. 337 



Sounds on the West Coast close to the water's edge which prove 

 the correctness of Von Haast's views." (1) But Dr. von Haast's 

 map only shows that the glaciers of the period would have extended 

 into the sea provided the sea was then at its present position ; and 

 J have several times pointed out that there is no evidence at all in 

 favour of the idea that the glaciers reached the sea, but that on the 

 contrary the land at that time must have stood at a much higher 

 level than now. Consequently old moraines at present on the 

 shore line do not at all prove that the time of the greatest extension 

 of our glaciers was a cold period. The same remarks apply to Dr. 

 von Lendenfeld's own obsei-vations on ice scratches (2). 



4. At the Meeting of the Linnean Society of N. S. Wales held 

 on the 27th of last May, Mr. Wilkinson exhibited a collection of 

 recent shells obtained from an estuarine deposit near Newcastle in 

 which was a specimen of Siphonalia maxima at present only found 

 in Bas.s' Strait, and Dr. Cox considered that this sub-fossil tended 

 to confirm the hyi)othesis that a colder climate prevailed in N. S. 

 Wales at some not very remote period. Now noscitur a sociis is 

 a very useful adage in palaeontology, but unfortunately in this case 

 a list of all the shells found in the deposit has not yet been published. 

 If S. maxima is associated with other Tasmanian species most of 

 which do not live now so far north as Newcastle, then this will be 

 by far the most important evidence of a southern glacial epoch ever 

 advanced. But if, on the contrary, it is associated with N. S. 

 Wales shells, as appears to be the case ; then this new evidence 

 will shew that in Tasmania it is a survival of a species once more 

 widely spread, and will prove that Tasmania has not undergone a 

 glacial epoch since aS^. maxiyna lived on its shores. I have not seen 

 S. maxima but it appears to be the same as Fusus subrejlexus 

 Sowerby, in Darwin's Geological Observations in S. America ; a 

 species which is also found in the Pareora System in New Zealand, 

 and which I believe to be, at best, only a variety of S. dilatata of 

 North New Zealand, Austi-alia, and Japan. Certainly it by no 

 means gives the idea of a cold loving form. 



(1) Pro. Lin. Soc. of N. S. Wales, Vol. IV., p. 806. \ ' 



(2) As ice scratches are very rare in the Sound it is a pity that Dr. von 

 Lendenfeld has not given ns the precise locality where he found them. 



