June 21, 1894] 



NA TURE 



185 



too ample means will allow, they are doing their best to prose- 

 cute successfully a work of some magnitude and difficulty. 



One other preliminary statement seems necessary. Though 

 the so called lake in which the fossils were found has been 

 hilherlo spoken of as Lake Mulligan, that name has never been 

 officially conferred or recognised, and indeed it will not be 

 found on any of the maps of S )uth Australia. There prevails a 

 very proper sentiment, unfortunately not always carried into 

 action, that the native names of localities should, si fai- as 

 possible, be retained. In this particular instance the eupho- 

 nious native name Callabonna, which applies to a large water- 

 course leading into the lake and to an adjoining sheep-run 

 seemed appropiiate in all respects, save that the association of 

 sound and idea might erroneously suggest the possession of the 

 scenic beauties of an Italian lake by an area which is not only 

 waterless, but also almost unsurpassable for barrenness and utter 

 dfsolation. The name, however, has been approved by the 

 ecutive, and in future the locality will be known as Lake 

 lilabonna, and will be so called in the following notes : — 



Physical Features of the Lake Eyre Basin. 



As has often been observed, those who might form their 

 estimate of the physical geography of South Australia from an 

 inspection of its maps alone, would come to very errone ^us con- 

 clusion?. The numerous, and often immense, areas marked as 

 lakes, and the plentiful streams which appear to supply them, 

 deserve their name! on rare occasions only. Ordinarily the 

 lakes are only shallow, mud-bottomed, or salt-encrusted clay- 

 pans, and the rivers dry water-courses, or it may even be that 

 a definite channel is unrecognisable. Only after the heavy 

 tropical rains, which at too rare intervals descend to these 

 latitudes, do the rivers run for a brief peiiod and the lakes 

 contain water, though for some time afterwards the deeper 

 parts of the water-courses may remain as water-holes, or chains 

 of water-holes of greater or less size and permanence. Those, 

 however, who have only seen the river channels dry, can have 

 little idea of what torrents ihey may become under such circum- 

 stances. The tlood waters of the Barcoo or Cooper, some few 

 years ago, spread over a breadth of Inm forty to fifty miles on 

 its way to reach Lake Eyre. Lake Eyre itself has occasion- 

 ally been filled, and is then a vast inland sea over a hundred 

 miles long and fifty broad, and, when full of water, might well 

 have suggested great possibilities of internal navigation. 



The area of these inland lakes presents roughly a division 

 into a Western system, comprising Lake Gairdnerand numerous 

 adjacent smaller clay-pans ; a Central system, of which Lake 

 Eyre, Lake Eyre .South, and Lake Torrens are the chief mem- 

 bers ; and an Eastern system, comprising, in their order from 

 north to south. Lakes Gregory, Blanche, Callabonna and 

 Frome. These three systems have no direct communication 

 with one another ; in fact, they are separated by more or less 

 elevated ground. 



From the fact of some of the early explorers, in proceeding 

 northwards, having struck the apparently unending margins and 

 impassable beds of the huge clay-pans, either of Lake Torrens, 

 of Lake Eyre, or of those of the Eastern group, all of them were 

 for some time supposed t) be continuous and to form one great 

 lacustrine surface. Indeed, for many years a familiar feature 

 on the maps of Australia was an im uense crescentic, or horse- 

 shoe shaped, area with its two horns, formed by the present 

 Lakes Torren-i and Frome, directed southwards. Eventually 

 the progress of discovery enabled this horse-shoe to be broken 

 up into the constituents now called Lakes Torrens, Eyre, 

 Gregory, lilanche and Frome, as they now appear. It is easy to 

 see, on reference to the map, how great the chances were that 

 explorers, having once passed into the then unknown region 

 enclosed within the concavity of this great system of clay-pans, 

 should have had their further progress checked at the shores of 

 "He or other of them. 



The constituents of the Eastern system, with which we are 

 more immediately concerned, form a chain of clay-pans con- 

 nected by intervening channels, and together they present a 

 curve with its concavity directed towards the west. The whole 

 of the series is, according to the most recent maps, included 

 between the meridians of longitude 13S 50' and 140° 20' East of 

 Greenwich, and the parallels of south latitude 31° 12' and 

 28° 50'. 



On those rare occasions when the (lood waters of the 

 Bai'coo come down in sutficient volume, from the immense area 

 which it drains in Southern ijueensland, they pass into the 



Strzelecki, a large effluent which leaves the main channel at 

 Innamincka, a place of melincholy memory in the history of 

 Australian discovery, as clos.; by the present settlement lie the 

 remains of the ill-fated Burke, who perished in 1861 after a 

 successful transit of Australia. These floods may then fill 

 Lakes Gregory and Blanche ; the latter lake, indeed, was filled 

 two years ago, when its waters remained fresh for six months. 

 A channel from the Strzelecki leads into Lake Callabonna, 

 and I am informed ihit this depression also was filled from the 

 same source some years ago, a statement which is supported by 

 the presence upon the sand-hills of numerous fragments of the 

 eggs of fresh-water fowl and of bones of water-rats. On the 

 older mapi Lake Callabonna was depicted as a northerly 

 extension of Lake Krome, and indeed these two are actually 

 connected by a channel, but whether water has ever been k lown 

 to flow from one into the o her I have not been able to learn. 



There is compensation for the unpromising physical features 

 of Lake Callabonna, that will be afterwards described, in the 

 fact that its bed has lately been shown to be a veritable necro- 

 polis of gigantic extinct Marsupials and Birds, which have 

 apparently died where they lie, literally in hundreds. The facts 

 that the bones of individuals are often unbroken, close together 

 and frequently in their proper relative positions, the attitude of 

 many ol the bodies and the character of the matrix in which 

 they are eni'ieddeti, negative any theory that they have been 

 carried thither by 11 )ods. The probability is rather that they 

 met their death by being entombed in the effort to reach fojd 

 or water, just as even now happens in dry seasons to hundreds 

 of caitle which, exhausted by want of food, are unable to extri- 

 cate themselves from the boggy places that they have entered 

 in pursuit either of water or of the little g'een herbage due to its 

 presence. The accumulation of so many bodies in one locality 

 points to the fact of their assemblage around one of the last 

 remaining cases in the region of desiccation which succeeded an. 

 antecedent condition of plenteous rains and abundant waters. 

 An identical explanation has been suggested by Mr. Daintree in 

 his notes on the Geology of Queensland (Jaiirnal Geol. Soc. 

 1872, p. 275). 



Lake Callabonna. 



Lake Callabonna, the description of which is, in its mtin- 

 features, applicable to iis kindred clay-pans, has a length of 

 over fifty miles. About ten miles wide at its northern extre- 

 mity it narrows to fuur or five at the site of the recent excava- 

 tions, which is some fifteen miles to the southward, and becomes 

 still further constricted in the remainder. Its shores, especially 

 on the eastern side, are as yet imperfectly surveyed, nor have, I 

 believe, any levels been taken of its bed. I'os-iibly, like Lake. 

 Eyre, it may actually be below the sea level, but in any case it 

 is relatively low lying, for water-courses lead into it on three 

 sides. Tne Mount Hopeless, Yerila, Woratchie, Hamilton, 

 Parabarana, and Pepegoona Creeks, all of which rise in the 

 Flinders Range, enter it on the western side, and the Callabonna 

 and Vandama Creeks, rising in the Gr^-y Range, on the east. 

 Though these only run after heavy rain, they may then bring 

 down a considerable quantity of flood water. As I have alreaty 

 sia'ed, water can fljw into it at the northern end by the Moppa- 

 Collina Channel which communicates with the Strzelecki. The 

 occasional character of the surrounding country may be best 

 appreciated by relerence to some of the names given by the 

 early explorers and setilers, such as Mount Hopeless, Dreary 

 Point, Illusion Plains, Mount Deception, Mirage Creek, whicn 

 tell their own story of drought, diflficulties, and disappoint- 

 ments. 



Speaking generally, the bed of the lake is a great flat clay-pan, 

 depressed, but very little, below the surrounding country. In- 

 the neighbourhood of the fossilifer jus area, however, this pre- 

 vailing flatness is broken by the existence of an aggregation 

 of dunes or hillocks of fine drift sand, not exceeding thirty feet 

 in height, and with the ridges running more or less north and 

 south at right angles to the direction of the prev.dent westerly 

 winds. These dunes are so far discontinuous that, did the 

 lake contain a very few feet of water, they would be converted 

 into a number of irregularly-shaped sand is'cts. From a foot to 

 eighteen inches below their surface is a layer of loosely com- 

 pacted sand rock in which were founil the bivalve Corbicu'.a 

 desolala, Tate, now living in the Cooper River system, and the 

 univalve BUiitfonha slirlingi, Tate, not yet known to be living, 

 though related to the common littoral species K. strialiilii. 



The sand-dune area is about four miles long fiom north t 



NO. 1286, VOL. 50] 



