49 



POST-MlOGENE ClIMATK IN SoUTH AUSTRALIA 



(Being- in part a rejoinder to Mr. Scoular's Paper). 



Et Propessor Ealph Tate, r.O.S., P.L.S., &c. 



[Bead August 4, 1885.1 



I have never advocated witli any earnestness that climatic 

 changes of high value are due to geological rather than cos- 

 mical causes ; and in a course of public lectures, delivered last 

 year at the University, I applied Dr. Croll's hypothesis to the 

 elucidation of certain physiographic peculiarities of Central 

 Australia, which are co-ordinate with the glacial signs in the 

 southern part of the province. I have had long in preparation 

 a paper on " Climate past and present in its relation to the 

 distribution of animal and vegetable life in Australia," an out- 

 line of which formed the basis of the lectures above referred 

 to ; but the wish to know by actual observation the physical 

 features of the basin of Lake Eyre has stayed my pen. It is^ 

 therefore, with much reluctance that I am forced into this 

 controversy before I am prepared to encompass the questions 

 involved in all their manifold bearings. 



Ice-marks. — These and other signs of moving ice are now 

 known in Soiith Australia, at altitudes from 50 to about 2,000 

 feet from sea level. They have been examined by several 

 geologists well versed in reading such signs in Canada, 

 G-reat Britain, and Central Europe, who have without excep- 

 tion unhesitatingly attributed them to the action of ice. In 

 Yictoria similar phenomena have been observed by G-riffiths 

 and Stirling. In the face of the facts, thus daily accumulating,, 

 they must be daring men to dispute that Southern Australia 

 has had a climate su-fficiently cold to originate glaciers at compara- 

 tively low elevations. The strenuous opponents to such generali- 

 zation are Professor Hutton, of New Zealand ; Dr. Lenden- 

 feld, of Sydney ; and Mr. Scoular, our corresponding member. 



Prof. Hutton inclines to the opinion that the glacial period 

 in Australia could not have been so severe as is demanded by 

 the altitudinal and geographic range of the ice-marks observed 

 in South Australia and Victoria, else the simultaneous glacial 

 period in New Zealand would have been of polar severity, which 

 he thinks it was not because of the great abundance of animal 

 life at that time. He writes* — " Neither are there any signs of a 

 Pleistocene glaciation of New Zealand greater than at present.'* 



* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, vol. xli., p. 213, 1885. 



