320 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION D. 



and Polycnemon diandrum, Threlkeldia diffusa, Kochia oppositi- 

 folia, K hrevifolia, Salicornia arbuscula, S. australis, Temp)letonia 

 retusa, and Festuca littoralis among endemic species. 



Captain Sturt was the first to suggest, that the Basin of Lake 

 Eyre was once a fresh-water sea, and Mr. Ether idge has specu- 

 lated on the lacustrine origin of the Desert Sandstone, which 

 occupies so large an area in Central Australia ; I arrived at the 

 same conclusions quite independently and brought forward facts 

 of the former existence of a vast inland sea centering about Lake 

 Eyre. 



The Pliocene Tertiary loams and sands have yielded and at 

 several distant localities within the basin of Lake Eyre, the 

 following palseontological proofs of their lacustrine origin— a 

 species of crocodile comparable in size with the living C. porosus, 

 plates of a turtle indicating a carapace of at least a yard in 

 diameter, the vertebi'te of large lish, the mandibular teeth of 

 Ceratodus, extinct species of U^iio, bones of Diprotodon, of several 

 extinct Kangaroos, and of an Emu-like bird. 



Elsewhere* I have sought to claim for this region during the 

 accumulation of the Pliocene drifts, a very much larger rainfall 

 than it now has — this pluvial condition being contemporaneous 

 with that which gave rise to the glacial phenomena at places in 

 more southern latitudes in Australia, and as other evidences in 

 addition to the palteontological ones first mentioned, I appeal to 

 the waterless large river channels, to the contracted and saline 

 like basins, and to the nature and disposition of the sand ridges 

 which form one of the most characteristice and wide spi^ead 

 physical feature in Central Australia. 



The Pliocene drifts, which partially conceal the Cretaceous beds 

 over a very extensive area in Central Australia, show their fluvia- 

 tile origin in the form of fossil Unios as far south as Leigh Creek, 

 one hundred miles from the present margin of Lake Eyre, and 

 situated nearly four hundred feet above the sea level, and thirty -nine 

 feet more above Lake Eyre.f Such a water level would connect 

 Lake Eyi-e with Lake Torrens by way of the broad gap, which 

 interrupts the Ai^oona Eange on the south of Termination Hill, 

 and would unite in a vast inland sea the whole of the lake region 

 around Lake Eyre, and to the westward of Lake Torrens, A very 

 much less addition to the present height of water level would 

 connect Lake Eyre and Lake Frome, connecting a large depressed 

 region into a continuous inland sea. Much of the Murray Desert 

 to the eastward of Overland Corner, and perhaps embracing the 

 whole Riverine region, was at this time a lacustrine area, though 

 probably disconnected from that of Lakes Eyre and Torrens. 



* Trans. Roy. Soc. S. Aust. Vol. VIII., pp. 49 et Seq. 



t The north end of Lake Torrens is one hundred and eleven feet above sea level, and the 

 south end Of Lake Eyre is thirty-nine feet below it. 



