24 Evidences of a Glacial Epoch in Victoria 



cold periods have left behind them many inorganic traces of 

 their occurrence. The warm, interglacial periods, however, 

 produced a luxuriant growth of vegetation, and the remains 

 of this are fairly plentiful. 



Thus, there are the fossils of the Haddon lead, which 

 Mueller declares to be indicative of a hot, humid, equable 

 climate during the newer-older pliocene period, and these 

 are closely adjacent to a deep boulder bed, indicative of 

 glacial times, the proximity of which tells us of a quick 

 succession of climatic changes. 



At the mouth of the Cumberland Creek, near the Otway, 

 there is a lignite deposit, the product of warm, moist, equable 

 times, closely overlain by a conglomerate of sand, gravel, 

 and huge boulders, relics of the other extreme {Geo. S. Rep., 

 p. 96). Similar deposits, in close juxtaposition, occur in con- 

 siderable numbers throughout the colony, and notably in the 

 superficial alluviums of Gippsland (Selwyn, Phy. G. Vict, 

 p. 79). On the heights of Kiandra we have lignite inter- 

 calated between conglomerates of pliocene age. 



Baron von Mueller has discovered evidence of these climatic 

 fluctuations in three complete changes in the character of 

 Australian vegetation, all of which have occurred since the 

 commencement of the pliocene period. The fossil remains 

 show that when the older pliocene deposits were being laid 

 down this country had a lauraceous flora. With the newer 

 pliocene this disappeared, and in its stead plants of the 

 meliaceous order became in the ascendant, and had associated 

 with them a richly tropic flora. This may have been the 

 period which yielded the palm frond discovered fossilised in 

 Tasmania (Geo. S., Vol. II., p. 24) ; and our cabbage-palms, in 

 Gippsland, also may trace back their introduction to this era. 



With the close of this period meliaceous plants disappear 

 completely from this continent ; the tropic forms move 

 northward ; and in pleistocene times myrtaceous plants come 

 upon the scene for the first time, and eventually give to our 

 scenery the peculiar and marked character that it now has 

 (G. S. Vict, Vol. II., 29). 



When We reflect upon these three entire and rapid changes 

 in our vegetation, we can find no explanation that will 

 account for them as the glacial epoch will, with its climatic 

 fluctuations, its sea oscillations, and its frequent breaking up 

 and reuniting of our continent. 



But the fact that fossils indicative of warm temperatures 

 have been found in formations of pliocene and more recent 



