244 proceedings of section c. 



3. — Western Australia. 



{By Mr. A. Gibb Maitland.) 



I regret to say that there are no fresh discoveries to report in the 

 matter of the Glacial Geology of Western Australia. 



id) QUATERNARY CLIMATE IN AUSTRALASIA COMMITTEE. 

 {See Vol. XIII., f. Ivii.) 



Secretary's Report. 



The reference to recent variations in Australasian climate in the 

 voluminous report issued by the Eleventh International Geol ogica 

 Congress is so scanty and unsatisfactory that it is, perhaps, advisable 

 in the first report of the Committee to state the evidence available 

 up to the present at greater length than a report of this nature usually 

 demands. The fact that a climatal variation has taken place within 

 comparatively recent times is emphasized by Professor J. W. Gregory 

 in his Dead Heart of Australia. In this work he advances the theory 

 that Central Australia has within comparatively recent times, certainly 

 within the period since the arrival of man in the continent, experienced 

 a somewhat humid climate and maintained in consequence a richer 

 vegetation, for the large herbivorous marsupials which formerly in- 

 habited the land could not have found subsistence on the scanty 

 vegetation that now exists in those parts where their remains are so 

 plentifully found. This hypothesis was first put forward by Professor 

 Ralph Tate, but Professor Gregory supports his contention by the some- 

 what uncertain evidence derived from a consideration of native myths 

 and traditions that forests with large trees had since the arrival of the 

 ancestors of the Australian aboriginals, flourished over this treeless 

 land. It is obvious that such a forest could not have grown under 

 the climatal conditions now existing. 



The presence of a former climate of more humid character than that 

 now obtaining is supported by the investigations of Dr. H. I. Jensen. 



In a preliminary paper on the " Geology of the Warrumbungle 

 Mountains " (Proceedings of the Linnean Society of N.S.W., 1906), 

 he came to the conclusion, based on physiographic evidence, that a 

 pluvial climate obtained in Australia during Pleistocene times, and that 

 this was succeeded, at any rate over the western slope of the mountain 

 area of eastern New South Wales, by a superimposed arid cycle which 

 is still prevailing. These conclusions were confirmed by a more detailed 

 examination of the area as recorded in papers on the " Geology of the 

 Warrumbungle Mountains " and the " Geology of the Nandewar 



