128 THE GLACIER EPOCH OF AUSTRALASIA. 
tricity of about 550,000 years earlier in the Pliocene age 
and contemporaneous with our older pluvial terrace drifts on 
lower levels. It may be remembered that the eccentricity 
of the earth’s orbit at this maximum period of cyclic eccen- 
tricity is calculated to have been 28°57 per cent. greater than 
the cycle of eccentricity which occurred during the last ice age 
of Europe. If we reason that the effect on temperature 
should be in proportion to the intensities of eccentricity, we 
must assume that the lowering of the névé or snow line in 
the earlier maximum cycle would be as muchas 3,857 feet, 
and this, with the restored level of our western mountain 
plateau, which would have been wasted for 850,000 years, 
would place the mean level of its upper surface at a 
height of about 400 feet above the névé or snow line, and thus 
produce the necessary zzztial conditions for the formation of 
a snowfield which might eventually accumulate snow and 
ice whose surface might be as high as 1,400 feet above the 
snow line, and would then, by tae assumed balance of preci- 
pitation over melting, be able to send glaciers down its 
western slopes, possibly within 1,000 feet, or, in favourable 
valleys, perhaps to 600 or 700 feet above sea level. According 
to personal observation, and to the testimony of Messrs. 
Montgomery, Moore, Sprent, Jones, Dunn,and others, the same 
calculations would indicate corresponding results for Mount 
Kosciusko and other peaks over 6,300 feet in the southern 
Alps of Australia. 
Thus, if we take 11,000 feet as the isochional or névé 
for the latitude of Mount Kosciusko we have the following 
result :— 
ALT. 
Existing isochional of Mount Kosci- 
usko (say) aa see i. 
Less 3,857 feet, due to lowering of 
temperature during period of max. 
eccentricity of earth’s orbit with 
winter in aphelion, 850,000 years 
ago, say in Pliocene period sae 3,85 7ft. 
11,000ft. 
Isochional of older glacier period of 
Australia in latitude 36°... ae 7, 143ft. 
Present height of Mount Kosciusko 7,200ft. 
Add waste by denudation in 850,000 
years cv : 850ft. 
Difference showing height above 
névé ste ails és Sie 
907ft, 
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