82 THE GLACIER EPOCH OF AUSTRALASIA. 
The absence of such evidence in a region whose mountains 
rise to a height of over 12,000 feet,* and whose southern 
borders extend to 47° 10° south latitude, is full of significance 
when we come to consider the various theories advanced to 
account for the occurrence of the great glacial epoch in the 
Northern Hemisphere, and especially so when we come to 
examine the proofs of a true glacial epoch in the more 
northerly limits of the Australian mainland. 
Australia.—In the Australian mainland there are no high 
mountains asin New Zealand. The highest peak in the eastern 
cordillera occurs in the southern and eastern Australian Alps 
in about 37°, corresponding to the position of Mount Etna in 
north latitude—Mount Kosciusko and Mount Townsend, the 
two highest peaks attain here an elevation of 7,171 and 7,256 
feet respectively. The whole of the mainland lies within 11° and 
39° south latitude, broadly corresponding to the position of 
Northern Africa or Syria and Arabia in northern latitudes. 
As moreover the greater portion of Australia is low-lying, it » 
can be no more expected that we should find any traces of 
intense glacial action within its borders in past times, than 
that we should look for evidences of the extension of the 
great ice sheet of Northern Europe in the lowlands of the 
lower northern latitudes of Syria and Arabia. 
Apparent Absence of Glacial Deposits corresponding to the 
“ Till” of Scotland.—Setting aside for the present the origin 
of certain erratic boulders and other marks of glaciation 
which are found in beds of conglomerate in New South 
Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania, in rocks corresponding to the 
close of the Permo-Carboniferous age, and which undoubtedly 
appear to have been transported to their present position by 
means of floating ice—no satisfactory evidence of glacial 
action has yet been discovered in Australia corresponding to 
the till, boulder clay, movraine-profonde or grund-moraine of 
the great ice age of Northern Europe and North America. 
Indeed it would be a matter of the greatest surprise, even to 
the most ardent disciples of ice-cap extension, in Europe and 
America, if such evidences should appear; for neither 
the advocates of the effects upon climate of the extremes of 
eccentricity of the earth’s orbit combined with the precession 
of the equinoxes, the advocates of changes in the distribu- 
tion of land and water, nor the advocates of a combination of 
astronomical and geographical causes, have ever attempted to 
show that influences could possibly induce such an extreme 
lowering of temperature as would cause the northern polar ice 
cap to creep and extend beyond the north latitude of 39°, 
which point corresponds in south latitude nearly with the 
*Mount Cook 12,349 feet. 
