PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION C. 461 



axes of the ripples trend about W. 30° S. and E. 30° N., and the wind 

 which produced them has apparently come from a direction about 

 N. 30° W. If this was the direction of the prevalent wind which fed 

 the snowfields it must be conceded that the wind was derived from the 

 southern anticyclone belt, and that the anticyclone belt of that period 

 was not comparatively dry, as it is now, but was highly charged with 

 snow or moisture. In other words, the Permo-Carboniferous snow- 

 fields were nourished by snowy ''brave west winds" or "roaring 

 forties " coming from a cold but moist anticyclone belt. 



With reference to the evidence in extra-Australasian regions, it 

 is interesting to note that in South Africa the Permo-Carboniferous 

 glaciation was chiefly the work of land ice, which had its gathering 

 ground in the Northern Transvaal or Rhodesia, and which radiated 

 eastwards towards Natal, and southwards across the Orange River and 

 Cape Colony. There the development of the ice was close to the 

 southern anticyclone belt. 



The same may be said of the Permo-Carboniferous glacial boulder 

 beds of Southern Brazil, known as the New Orleans conglomerates. 



A similar remark apphes to the wonderful glacial beds and striated 

 pavements of the Central Provinces of India and the Punjab in the 

 Rajputana area, as well as to the Salt Range. The ice there had its 

 gathering ground near the parallel of 18° N. lat., or even still nearer 

 to the equator. It moved northwards for at least 500 miles over a 

 land area of comparatively low relief, just as was that of South Africa 

 and of AustraUa, and somewhere between Jaisalmer and the Salt 

 Range and the Indus Valley it actually reached sea-level, and scattered 

 its icebergs, laden with boulders and erratics, on the surface of the 

 seas further north. There is this remarkable difference, however, in 

 the general geographical and meteorological situation of the glacial beds 

 of India, as compared with those of the Southern Hemisphere in Permo- 

 Carboniferous time : the Indian glacial beds, and the ice sheets which 

 produced them, probably lay equatorwards of the northern anti- 

 cyclone belts, and consequently the snow which produced these ice 

 sheets of India could not have been derived from westerlies blowing 

 out from the northern anticyclone belt, but must rather have owed 

 their origin to snow or moisture transported in Permo-Carboniferous 

 time by the north-east trade wind. Again, there is a suggestion of 

 the existence of a cold anticyclone belt laden with moisture or snow, 

 this time in the Northern Hemisphere. 



PLEISTOCENE. 



If the as yet doubtful, but none the less interesting, possible 

 evidence of the ice action in Australia in Cretaceous or early Tertiary 

 time, to which Mr. H. Y. L. Brown has called attention, be passed 

 over for the present, until further and detailed evidence is collected, 

 the Pleistocene problems of glaciation may next be briefly considered. 



In the Southern Hemisphere there is evidence in New Zealand of 

 the glaciers of the Southern Island being 50 or 60 miles in length during 

 the epoch of maximum glaciation, as compared with their present 



