()<3 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



Stirling, even yet show striated and grooved surfaces. If 

 the mountains had suffered much denudation, the stri?e and 

 grooves would certainly have been removed and roches 

 moutonnees would have vanished — except where protected 

 by overlying deposits — long ago. 



80 then, seeing that the theory of greater elevation cannot 

 be sustained, we must look in another direction for the 

 explanation, and we have the astronomical theory at hand. 

 According to this theory, we should expect to find evidence 

 of a Pleistocene glacial period here, corresponding with that 

 of the Northern Hemisphere. As we have seen, this is the 

 period to which Mr. Stirling has referred this latest glaciation 

 of the Australian Alps. As eminent authorities have already 

 observed, in trying to realize the probable effect of astro- 

 nomical conditions favourable to glaciation in the Northern 

 and Southern Hemispheres iCspectively, the great proportion 

 of sea to land that now obtains in the south must always be 

 borne in mind. The effect of this, in the present distribution 

 of land and sea, would undoubtedly be to mitigate these 

 conditions. In Pleistocene times, there is no evidence to 

 show that oui- mountains were appreciably higher than now ; 

 it seems more probable that our land surface stood actually 

 lower. So that the astronomical conditions which, during 

 this period, resulted in producing such a severe glaciation 

 in the Northern Hemisphere, weie probably so mitigated in 

 the Southern Hemisphere that glaciers only appeared in the 

 higher mountains. 



Mr. G. S. Griffiths, in a papei' on the "Evidences for a 

 post-Miocene Glacial Period in Victoria," describes heavy 

 boulder washes, distributed in many parts of the Colony. 

 These " washes " are ascribed to glacial action. Though the 

 evidence for this is not conclusive, yet it is by no means 

 improbable that these heavy deposits of bo\ilders — many of 

 them basaltic — were formed at the period of the last glacia- 

 tion of the Alps, when the precipitation was much greater 

 than now. The Dividing Range, except in its eastern parts, 

 not being high enougli for the production of glaciers, in the 

 short hot summers of the epoch vast floods from melting 

 snow swept down from the mountains, swelling the rivers 

 and depositing these boulder bed.s. 



At the two earlier periods of glaciation we have indicated, 

 it is not improbable that there was a greater southward 

 extension of land by way of Tasmania than now obtains. 

 In Upper Palaeozoic times, tlie Main Divide must have stood 



