BY A. N. LEWIS, M.C., LL.15. 27 



All this can be seen at a glance when the landscape is 

 viewed in panorama from an elevation and points to an 

 invasion of the whole district as indicated, by a great ice 

 sheet, probably 1,500-2,000 feet in thickness [the elevation 

 of the rugged and apparently unglaciated crags above the 

 floor of the glacial valleys], gi'owing from the tremendous 

 snow precipitation of the West Coast and moving down the 

 Huon, Serpentine, and Anne River Valleys, and perhaps 

 reaching the sea at Port Davey. An ice cap must cover 

 the whole of the land surface of the area (Hobbs, 1910). 

 It is doubtful at present whether the ice that filled the 

 Upper Huon at this stage covered the top of the surrounding 

 mountains with a continuous white sheet. The rarity of 

 moraines definitely attributable to this epoch of glaciation 

 is an indication that here at any rate very little rock surface 

 was showing above the ice. But even if the more prominent 

 ranges protruded it was a very considerable glacier bearing 

 close resemblance to an ice cap, and the ice moved radially 

 over the flat country between the ranges impelled rather by 

 weight of successive accumulations of snow than by the 

 slope of the ground. This ice cap carved the main features 

 of the topography of these western plains before the advent 

 of the glaciers, which have left us the more obvious traces, 

 and which by the action of their cirques eating into the 

 sides of the mountains have carved the present topography 

 of tlie elevated mountain ranges. 



These later glaciers have left remains that are easily 

 recognisable all round Mt. Anne, which has been subjected 

 to the biscuit-cutting process described by W. D. Johnson 

 (Hobbs, 1910), and approximates to the topography he calls 

 a "karling" (using Nussbaum's term) illustrated on Plate 8 

 of Hobbs' 1922 edition. The mountain has been cut to the 

 heart by three tremendous cirques, in two of which lie con- 

 siderable lakes dammed back behind walls of morainal 

 material which covers the plain at the entrance to the cirques 

 Other cirques have cut into the outliers on the south-east and 

 west. 



Between the two western quartzite outliers is a tremen- 

 dous cirque, cutting into the mountain to the diabase cap 

 and standing at the head of a decidedly U-shaped valley 

 some three miles long. The cirque that terminates the 

 valley had not started to enlarge at its head before the con- 

 clusion of the glacial period and the walls do not present as 

 fine a circle of cliff as is common in Tasmania. The glacier 

 that flowed from here has strewn the floor of the valley with 



