110 . REPORT— 1861. 



asli and cinder conglomerate exists but in on6 place — on the Island of Law- 

 rence, in Portland Bay. Clift's of this singular compound rise there 150 feet. The 

 author's impression is that the source was a submarine volcano to tlie south-west, 

 — the com'se of the preTailing wind and cmTent ; and that the ashes and volcanic 

 dust were received in some sheltered bay, since raised with the coast. The extinct 

 volcanos are in the form of lakes and moimtains. The lakes are depressions usually 

 on slight eminences. Terang, Elingamite, Pm-rumbete, Wangoon, and Lower Hill 

 are fresh, while Keilambete and Bulleenmem ai-e salt. The shallow saline lakes 

 of the plains were not fonner cratei-s. The depths of some of these lakes are 50, 

 100, 150, 200, and 300 feet. The Devil's Likstand of Mount Gambior is 260 feet. 

 The banks vaiy from a few feet to 300 feet in height above the water. The cir- 

 cmuference varies from 100 yaixls to 7 miles. The thickness of the ash in- 

 creases with the distance from the crater, but is always thickest on the eastern side. 

 At Lower Hill, at a quai-ter of a mile from the bank, on the northern quarter, it is 

 80 feet deep, while at a mile oft^ on the eastern side, it is 150 feet. The volcanic hills 

 vai-y from a few yaixls to above 2000 feet above the sea-level. The depth of the 

 dry craters rmis from 50 feet to 300 feet. Gambler and Schanck are within the 

 South Australian border. The former has three fine lakes. The latter is a dry 

 basin, known as the Devil's Pimchbowl. Porudon is a cone of veiy light cinder, 

 elevated amidst the remarkable rises. Lem'a is a broken crater on the edge of the 

 rises ; while PuiTimibete is a beautiful sheet of water, a few miles distant, which 

 once, as a crater, discharged vast quantities of ash. The other princijial volcanos 

 of Western Victoria ai'e Buninyong, Blowhard, Noorat, Gellibrand, Napier, Franklin, 

 Cavern, Shadwell, Lower Hill, Clay, Elephant, Eckerslej'. No adequate impression 

 can be received as to the age of the activity of these cones and cratei's. There is 

 a fi-eshness in most of them indicative of a comparatively modem date. The 

 natives have traditions of the eruptions of several of them. As loam overspreads 

 the recently scattered amiferous drift of several of the diggings, it woidd not appeal" 

 to have been of gi-eat date. It occui'S on tertiary limestone to the west, and imder- 

 lies it as well. 



Mr. Antonio Brady exliibitcd some flint instnmients, together with bones of 

 El-ephas prwtif/emus and Echini, obtained by him only a few days since from the 

 drift at St. Achoul, near Amiens. He stated that aithough found only a few feet 

 above the chalk, in the drift, in true association with the bones and shells of extinct 

 species, still, from the composition of the drift, there was in his judgment no proof 

 that the animals and the makers of the instnmients lived at one and the same time. 

 From the heterogeneous and rolled state of the materials, there was gi-eat reason to 

 believe that they had been disinterred from their original resting-places by some 

 sudden torrent or convulsion, and been reinterred in their present association. The 

 drift had clearly never been lifted by the hand of man, but is doubtless in the state 

 in which it was deposited, whenever that may have been. 



On ilie Aqueous Origin of Granite. 

 By Alexander Bktson, F.B.8.E., P.B.S.S.A. 



In this paper the author referred to the labours of Dr. William Smith, who pub- 

 lished his ' Tabular View of the British Strata ' in 1790, and remarked that since 

 that period geology had been studied mainly in the direction of paleontology. 

 Physical, chemical, and dynamic geology were left almost unregai'ded by the great 

 masters of the science, who generally accepted the specidations of Hutton and the 

 experiments of Hall as demonstrating the igneous origin of the primary rocks. 



The author stated that the Huttonian theoiy was most ably attacked, and, in his 

 opinion, overthrown, by Dr. MiuTay in his ' Comparative "\"iew of the Huttonian 

 and Neptunian Sj-stems of Geology,' a work most unaccountably overlooked. Since 

 that time it had sugg-ested itself to the sagacious mind of Davj', that the occmTence 

 of fluids in the cavities of crystals seemed to point to an aqueous origin. He also 

 alluded to the wiitings of Brewster, Sivewiight, and Nicol in the same field ; also 

 to Becquerel, Fuchs, Bischoff", and Delesse, who have taken up the subject of the 

 aqueous origin of rocks from a chemical point of \'iew. The author then laid before 

 the Society the result of ten years' experimental investigation into the sti'ucture of 



