Proceedings of flie Royal Society of Vicfoiid. 271 



With regard to the third proposition, that the immersion 

 of the Continent sufficient to tioat icebergs would reduce the 

 land sui'tkce to such a small area that it would iuive a mild 

 insular climate. If tliese beds were due to a deposit in the 

 lakes, they were not due to immersion in the ocean, and the 

 argument of the authors fell through, because the^v assumed 

 that the high-water level was the high-water level of the 

 ocean, whereas it appeared to him to be th(- high-water 

 level of various fresh-water lakes. 



Mr. Dexis'ANT said he would allude princi[)ail3' to the 

 claim made by these gentlemen for a post-Miocene glacial 

 epoch, or at any rate, even if not j)ost-Miocene, some portion 

 of the Tei"tinrv time, which would include the Eocene, 

 Miocene, and Pliocene. Consequently, if there were glaciers 

 in Victoria at that time, the climate must have been a cold 

 one, for it would be impossible to have a glacier with the 

 temperature the same as at present. If we started with 

 the Eocene, it was well known that there was a very rich 

 fauna in the Eocene, perhaps the richest of any found in 

 any part of tlie world, but it was essentially a tropical 

 fauna, and no one who had examined the launa of the 

 Eocene period would doubt ibr a moment but that he was 

 in the same latitudes as the West Indies and the Tropics 

 generally. Passing from the Eocene to the Miocene, the 

 climate was certainly getting cooler, but was still very 

 much warmer even than our present climate. The shells 

 indicated a climate becoming more and more like the 

 present, but ver}' far indeed from being a glacial one. 

 Passing to the Pliocene, during the last twelve years, two 

 very rich marine deposits had been found in the Pliocene, 

 one in the older Plioceiie near Adelaide, and another in the 

 west of our own Colony, at Limestone Creek ; in each of 

 these there was a rich fauna. The climate indicated was 

 slightly colder than that of the Miocene, and in both 

 deposits was found a large number of living shells. In the 

 late Pliocene or almost Pleistocene of Victoria, the living 

 shells amounted to 81 per cent., but they were not those 

 generally found on the present shores of Victoria, or of 

 Southern Australia, but those more frequently found living 

 in the northern pai'ts of the Continent. Consequently, at 

 the time they were deposited the climate was warmer than 

 now, and approximated to the climate of the northern parts 

 of the Continent. It might be concluded that in the older 



