Art. y.—Preliminari/ Account of the Glacial Deposits of 

 Bacchus Marsh. 



(With Plates X, XI and XII.) 



By Graham Officer, B.Sc, and Lewis Balfour, 



Melbourne University. 

 [Read July 14, 1892.] 



The subject of glaciation is one that is always of the 

 greatest scientitic interest. Its important bearings on the 

 questions of climate, past and present, and on the problems 

 connected with the evolution and distribution of plants and 

 animals, render it a field where the astronomer, geologist 

 and biologist may meet on common ground. The subject 

 has received its fair share of attention in the Northern 

 Hemisphere, in Europe, America, and Asia, but in the 

 Southern Hemisphere, where the evidence of past glaciation 

 is not so conspicuous, comparatively little has been done in 

 this direction. Any evidence of past ice-action in Aus- 

 tralia that may be discovered is of peculiar value, on account 

 of its bearing on the question of the probable cause of ice- 

 ages. 



The earliest reference to glacial action in Victoria is made 

 by Selwyn in his work on the Geology of this colony. In 

 this, a conglomerate is mentioned as occuriing near Bacchus 

 Marsh, and which contained boulders which he and Mr. 

 (afterwards Sir) R. Daintree considered could only have been 

 brought there through the agency of floating ice. 



Mr. James Stirling, F.G.S., and Di". Lendenfeldt, have 

 described evidences of former extensive glaciation in the 

 Australian Alps. To these discoveries reference will be 

 made later on. 



Mr. E. J. Dunn, F.G.S., has contributed two papers on the 

 Glacial Conglomerates of Victoria — one read before the 

 Royal Society of Victoria ; the other, in which the first is 

 incorporated, before the Australasian Association for the 



