Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 265 



particularly struck by the remark made in the paper, that 

 these grooves invariably lan north and south, that was to 

 say, exacth' coincident with the strike of the strata, and 

 these Silurian strata were tilted up at an angle of 70 degrees. 

 He did not know the extent of the patches uncovered, but 

 considering that the observers were most anxious no doubt 

 to see what they saw, was it not possible that they might 

 have mistaken the unequal wearing of the edges of the 

 Silurian strata. He had frequently seen on the smooth 

 upturned edges of the Silurian strata appearances of very 

 deep grooves, owing to the unequal wearing. But even 

 supposing them to be veritable grooves, it was not beyond 

 the range of possibility that they might have been formed 

 by an iceberg charged with hard pebbles underneath 

 grounding in the neighbourhood on the spot. With re- 

 gard to the roche moulonnde, he laboured under the dis- 

 advantage of never having been on the particular spots 

 which had been mentioned, so that he was unable to 

 judge from his own observation whether they were really 

 instances of roche moutonnee. He would just conceive it 

 possible, therefore, that the hummocky appearance might 

 have been caused by diluvial action. For instance, at 

 Lilydale, there was an appearance of hummocky rock, 

 which was simply caused by the action of the waves 

 on the seashore. Messrs. Otficer and Balfour objected 

 to the idea of marine action having anything to do 

 with the phenomena they instanced, but he would 

 venture to point out that tliere was indisputable evi- 

 dence that the whole continent had been submerged 

 thousands of feet under the i^ea. He had seen gravel 

 on the top of Mount Useful covered with basalt, and 

 this was generally put down on the geological maps as 

 marine gravel. There was some doubt as to the age 

 of that particular gravel, but there could be no doubt as 

 to the age of the drifts at Gastlemaine and Bendigo, and 

 other places, which would represent a submergence of at 

 least 2000 feet. It was a very moot point as to whether 

 these drifts had been caused by y)luvial action, extending 

 over a considerable pluvial period ; but he believed, with 

 Selwyn and others, that they were caused b}^ marine action. 

 Although he had appeared to criticise the paper somewhat 

 advei-sely, he quite admitted it was a very debateable 

 question. Not being an extreme glacialist, he was, perhaps, 

 inclined to minimise the evidence adduced, but he could 



