NO'l'RS m PORTION OF THE BUKKKKIN \ AIJ.KY. 



WITH SOME QUERIES AS TO THE UNIVERSAL APPLICABILITY 

 OF CERTAIN PHYSIOGRAPHIC AL THEORIES. 



By E. O. MARKS, B.A., B.E. 



(Plates VI, VII, VIII, IX.) 



Bead before the Royal Society of Queensland, October 2nd, 1912, 



The advances made during recent years in the scientific 

 interpretation of land forms, and through them of the 

 comparatively recent geological history of land surfaces, 

 have not been neglected by Australian scientists. Their 

 work has already proved of great scientific value, but it 

 is sadly hampered by the paucity of information concerning 

 much of the continent, including the majority of Queens- 

 land. 



Since the consideration of such knowledge as is avail, 

 able concerning the drainage systems of the rivers has 

 drawn particular attention to the courses of the Burdekin 

 and Fitzroy, the \\Titer has taken the opportunity, resulting 

 from a recent visit to the most interesting part of the 

 Burdekin 's course, to note some of its characteristics. 

 As the observations made have led him to doubt the correct- 

 ness of the interpretations put by some on the vagaries 

 of the river as well as the universal applicabihty of certain 

 physiographical theories, the opportunity is also taken 

 to give the reasons for these doubts. 



While callmg attention, in doing so, to the need for 

 the utmost caution in applying physiographical reasoning 

 to regions the geological structure of which is but 

 imperfectly understood, it is very far from the writer's 

 intention to belittle, in any way, the value of physiographical 

 studies and reasonings in regions whose outward features 

 and internal structure are reasonably well known. 



