Mountain Ranges of Gipps Land. 29 



which future generations, if not our own, will see, fruitful 

 with the olive aod the vine, blessed as the beauteous home 

 of a prosperous and happy people. 



I feel, gentlemen, that I owe the Society an apology for 

 this long and discursive paper, one, too, in which I fear the 

 professed geologist will find but little that is new. My 

 object, however, has been to indicate where enquiries can be 

 made, rather than to ofier any very profound theories or very 

 novel facts. I have long felt that the particular science, the 

 claims of which I advocate, has been too much neglected in 

 this colony. That profit and pleasure are to be derived from 

 its study is what I have sought to show. Its use must be 

 patent to every one who looks upon our own as a mining or 

 an agricultural country. When a Victorian Miller or 

 Mantell shall arise amongst us, such individual need be at 

 no loss to find materials for a work quite as interesting as 

 the Old Red Sandstone, or the Medals of Creation. Such a 

 treatise may have all the charms of an imaginative work 

 without departing fr'om the strict line of geologic fact. But 

 until this comes we need not be idle, nor on this subject 

 need we be dull. Our stony treasures are as great as those 

 of other lands. The story of our rocks and of our fossils is 

 well worth listening to, or even digging out if requisite. 

 The field is a rich and an ample one. He who toils in it 

 enthusiastically and with a will, need not toil in vain, for of 

 it may be said, " The harvest is indeed plenteous, though the 

 labourers are few." 



Art. IL — On the Probable Erosion of the Mountain Ranges 

 of Gipps Land. By Thomas E. Rawlinson, Esq., C.E. 



[Read 3rd July, 1865.] 



Having had occasion during the latter half of the years 

 1862, 1863, and beginning of 1864, to travel over the 

 country lying between Sale and Jericho, in various direc- 

 tions, my attention has been directed to the peculiar character 

 of the mountain fastnesses of that region, and also to some 

 extent to the mountain ranges extending northerly from Sale, 

 as a centre, up into the Omeo country. 



It is not my purpose to do more to-night, than allude 

 generally to the similar external character of the Omeo 

 routes with those of the country traversed by the tracts to 



