Vol. XXVIII. 



] B.-\RXARD, 111 the Western Lake District. 163 



by the wretched picture in Gregory's "Geography" to expect 

 two ordinary sheets of water in fairly level country ; but here 

 I was looking down into what might be termed an immense 

 quarry-hole full of water. This was Bullen-Merri. I did not 

 even comprehend its size until I returned home and looked up 

 the records in the " Victorian Year-Book." Suffice it to say 

 the lake covers 1,330 acres — almost as large as the Yan Yean — 

 with sides varying from fifty to four hundred feet high, con- 

 sequently the limited expanse which it seems to cover. Gnotuk 

 lies directly to the north, and is much smaller, and with banks 

 not quite so precipitous. Both lakes are within the same 

 encircling ridge, being separated from one another by the very 

 much lower isthmus. 



Fortunately I met, on the bank on which I was sitting, 

 perhaps 150 feet above the level of the water, a local resident, 

 who came to my aid, and pointed out the surrounding squatting 

 stations, lakes, &c., for the outlook here was grand in the 

 extreme. The afternoon was as fine as one could wish for, 

 and I fairly revelled in the sight presented all round. Mounts 

 Noorat, Shadwell, Elephant, the Cloven Hills, with Lake 

 Colongulac (a large, shallow depression, where, years ago, 

 remains of the marsupial lion were found) in the foreground, 

 were readily distinguished, as also Mount Fyans, with its pine 

 plantations ; but, besides these, I could easily make out Mounts 

 Sturgeon and Abrupt, at Dunkeld, some 75 miles away. Mount 

 William (the highest peak of the Grampians), Mount Cole, 

 Buninyong, and the mount I mentioned before, which I take 

 to be the Blue Mountain at Trentham. Leura, though close 

 at hand, was hidden by the hill forming the opposite side of 

 the chasm. 



These lakes and the district around were recently fully dealt 

 with in a geological survey report — " The Geology of the Camper- 

 down and Mount Elephant Districts," by H. J. Grayson and 

 D. J. Mahony, M.Sc, F.G.S., which is extremely interesting 

 and exhaustive. Their conclusions are different to the 

 generally accepted reasons for the existence of the lakes. The 

 popular idea is that they are craters of extinct volcanoes, and 

 the late Dr. J. E. Taylor, the well-known science lecturer, who 

 visited Australia in 1885, and published, as the result of his 

 travels, that interesting little book, " Our Island Continent," 

 says : — " I did not meet with anything more scientifically 

 interesting in Australia than the crater-lakes of \^''estern Vic- 

 toria. . . . Let us first take the two crater-lakes of Bullen- 

 Merri and Gnotuk." Some years ago Mr. T. S. Hart, M.A., 

 in a paper read before this Club on Tower Hill and Lake, near 

 Koroit {Vict. Nat., xvii., 1901, p. 159), advanced the theory 



