AUSTRALASIA, NEW GUINEA, AND NEW ZEALAND 755 



the significance of the peculiar problem of the Permo-Carboniferous, 

 inasmuch as the whole of the work of the field officers of the geo- 

 logical survey of New South Wales had proved that the Permo- 

 Carboniferous strata south of the Hunter River (lat. 33 S.) lie 

 almost horizontally. 



The independent testimony of the ore deposits of New Zealand 

 and Australasia was then examined, and the problem of Austral- 

 asian growth was formulated in the following terms : 



During the progress of geological time folding movements in 

 Australasia retreated north and east, while ore deposition moved 

 parallel with these movements. 



The growth of New Zealand does not appear to be known defi- 

 nitely, but the ISTew Guinea and the New Caledonian movements 

 appear to have opposed the Australian direction of growth. 



A study both of structure and of ore deposits suggests that New 

 Zealand, Australia, and New Guinea have had independent origins. 



GROWTH OF AUSTRALASIA FROM PRE-CAMBRIAN TO RECENT TIME 



Pre-Cambrian — The greater portion of Australia, which 

 stretches to the west of a line drawn from the southwest of Tas- 

 mania to the center of North Queensland, 1 is composed of pre- 

 Cambrian schists, gneisses, granites, and allied rock types. The 

 dominant strike of the foliations is northwest and southeast, 

 approximately, with a marked tendency to show large local, or 

 even regional, corrugations in the eastern portion of the area. This 

 is well shown on David's map accompanying his report of 191 1 2 to 

 the Royal Society. It is possible that at the close of the pre- 

 Cambrian period in Australia the land surface extended across the 

 southeastern or even the eastern portion of the continent. This 

 is suggested, not only by the schists of Cloncurry in Northern 

 Queensland mentioned by Woolnough, but also by the pres- 

 ence of great masses of schists and gneisses of unknown age in 

 Eastern Victoria extending northward into the Cooma district. 



1 W. G. Woolnough, Bulletin of the Northern Territory, No. 4, Dept. External 

 Affairs, Melbourne, 1912, p. 51. 



2 "Presidential Address," Proc. Roy. Soc. N.S. Wales, 191 1. See large map 

 accompanying the paper. 



