BY R. M. JOHNSTON, F.L.S. 127 
mountain plateau up to about 5,000 feet, and the same cause 
would also incline us to extend its elevated area further west, 
so as to embrace at least Mounts Tyndall, Geikie, Murchison, 
Read, Jukes, Owen, and Lyell. This would give us a very 
extended elevated catchment platform for the collection and 
piling up of a permanent snowfield sufficient to form an 
adequate supply for feeding the numerous glaciers which are 
known to have descended from its western slopes. 
If we also assume for the lat. 42° south that the snow cap 
would at least be 1,000 feet thick, we should then have 
reached a surface level of 6,000 feet. The question now is a 
crucial one. Would a height of 5,000 feet in this latitude 
ascend into the zsochional or plane of the permanent freezing 
point, supposing that the general lowering of the tempera- 
ture produced by the astronomical cause during the last 
glacial epoch of Hurope also produced exactly corresponding 
effects under similar conditions as to latitude, etc., in 
Tasmania and neighbouring Australasian colonies? Let us 
see. In the corresponding latitudes of the Pyrenees, the 
névé was only lowered 3,000 feet during the maximum effect 
of glacial action in the recent European ice age. As the névé 
at the present time, there, is placed at about 9,520 feet 
altitude, it is obvious that during the glacial period of 
Europe the névé of the Pyrenees must have stood at a 
height of about 6,520 feet. This would indicate that the 
mean height of even our restored western plateau would fall 
below the névé by about 1,520 feet, and under such condi- 
tions there could have been no snow cap, and hence no glaciers 
produced by the same general cause which produced the ice age of 
Europe in the pleistocene period. It must also be borne in 
mind that the Southern Hemisphere at present has its 
winter in aphelion, and that the existing level of the isochional 
or névé is far below the altitude of the névé in corresponding 
latitudes in the Northern Hemisphere ; and, therefore, in my 
Opinion, it would not be correct to measure the fall of 3,000 
feet in relation to calculated height of existing névé in the 
Southern Hemisphere, for the limit of 3,000 feet fall is 
calculated in relation to existing isotherms in the Northern 
Hemisphere. But suppose the mean of existing difference 
of the level at the névé in both hemispheres be taken for the 
same latitude it would still leave our restored western plateau 
about 1,225 feet below the estimated local névé or snow level 
at the time of the glacial epoch in Europe. This bears out 
the evidence of Australasian geologists that our glacier and 
pluvial epoch was not brought about by the same cause which 
produced the glacial epoch of Europe aud North America in 
the pleistocene period. Let us now see whether, by the same 
method of reasoning,a more favourable argument can be 
advanced on behalf of the earlier cycle of maximum eccen- 
