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Notes on Glacial Beds of Cambrian Age 

 IN Far North of South Australia. 



By Chas. Chewings, Ph.D., F.G.S. 



[Communicated by Prof. Tate.] 

 [Read May 7, 1901.] 



The Note on the Glacial Beds of Cambrian Age in South 

 Australia, read by Mr. Walter Howchin, F.G.S., before the 

 Royal Society of South Australia, has greatly interested me for 

 the following, amongst other, reasons : — While in the service of 

 the Umberatana Trust, in July, 1899, I visited the Worturpa 

 gold discovery, and saw in that neighbourhood a very extensive 

 rock formation that resembles so closely the description Mr. 

 Howchin gives — as published in the Register of April 3rd — that 

 I do not hesitate to say that a rock formation identical in 

 character has a very extensive development in the Flinders 

 Ranges, much farther North than Mr. Howchin has had an 

 opportunity of seeing. I may here state that, through having 

 other duties to attend to, it was not possible for me to make 

 more than a casual and very hurried examination of the beds 

 I refer to, and I had to leave the district, much to my regret, 

 without making the close investigation I had promised myself ; 

 and no opportunity has presented itself to me to visit the locality 

 since. I hesitated, in the absence of strise markings, &c., which 

 I had not seen, to call the beds other than Conglomerate, 

 because (1) Cambrian glacial "till" is not seen every day, and 

 (2) the discovery of such had not been made, to my knowledge, 

 in the Southern Hemisphere at that time ; (3) the boulders in 

 places were rounded off, and (4) to classify the beds as glacial 

 till of Cambrian age, without being sure, was premature. I may 

 say that from the fossils found near Beltana, and lithological and 

 stratigraphical characteristics generally, and also failing to find 

 any trace of fossils, I supposed the beds to be of Cambrian age. 

 It is quite certain they are not younger than the old Palaeozoics. 

 I congratulate Mr. Howchin on being the first to discover indis- 

 putable evidence of ice action. 



Worturpa lies 60 to 70 miles easterly from Leigh's Creek 

 Railway Station. Hereabouts is one of the roughest parts of 

 the Flinders Ranges. Benbonyathe, the highest point, is not far 

 off. In most directions the country is rough and rugged in the 



