140 Proceedings of the Royal Society of Victoria. 



dissolved and redeposited as the dune limestones, or in concretions 

 around plant roots. ^ M'Coy' has recorded the occurrence of 

 the extinct species Ardocephalus tvilliamsi M'Coy, and Phasco- 

 lo??iys pliocenus, M'Coy, and of the living Tasmanian Sarcophilus 

 7crsinus (Harris), at Queenscliff, on the western side of Port 

 Phillip entrance, in the " sandy beds intercalated with the 

 Pliocene Tertiary limestone." These fossils probably came from 

 the western dune series.^ 



The dune series is strongly falsebedded. The dominant false 

 dip is to the north and north-east. This fact suggests that the 

 dune material drifted from the south and south-west, and that 

 what are now the southern cliffs were formed on the northern 

 slope of the dunes. The drift of the sand at present is still 

 eastward and north-eastward. The sand patch in front of Mr. 

 Fowler's house has, he tells me, travelled eastward for 20 yards 

 during the last fifteen years. 



The limestones also have a general slope downward to the 

 north, having been deposited along the natural drainage plains. 

 That the stratification is due to false bedding is shown by the 

 vertical position of most of the concretions in places where the 

 bedding is inclined. 



A typical section of the dune series is shown at Fowler's Cove. 

 At the top are three feet of sand supported by thin horizontal 

 layers of limestones ; then follow five feet of sands with 

 abundant stem and root concretions ; the dip in this bed increases, 

 in the lower part. At the base are fifteen feet of strongly 

 falsebedded sands, dipping as much as 30° to the north-east. 



The existence of stacks of dune limestone along the foreshore 

 also shows that marine denudation has pushed back the coast- 

 line, and the dunes must at one time have extended some hundreds 

 of yards further to the south than they do at present. This marine 

 advance may have been due either to a subsidence of the land or 

 a local rise in sea level ; but a relatively greater elevation of the 

 dune belt in recent geological times is almost certain. 



1 A description of these fossil-like cylindrical concretions has been recently g^iven by 

 Mr. T. S. Hall, Vict. Nat. (1901) p. 47. 



2 Prod. Pal. Vict., dec. v. (1877) p. 8, and dec. vii. (1882) p. 12. 



a Fragments of fossils have been recorded from the Otway dunes by Mr. R. Etheridge, 

 Jnr. " Observations on the Sand Dunes of the Coast of Victoria." Trans. Roy. Soc. 

 Vict., vol. xii. (1876), p. 3. 



