During Post-Miocene Times. 27" 



And yet, when we search for such traces we cannot find 

 any. Undisturbed sedimentary deposits overlie the upturned 

 edges of our palseozoic rocks. 



Sir Andrew Clark in 1855 reported to our Government 

 that the " tertiary beds" of the southern parts of Victoria 

 "are always (a few cases of local disturbance excepted) 

 either horizontal, or dip at very small angles — viz., 1 deg. 

 to 5 degs." (Geo. Sur. Vict, 1855, p. 9). 



The limestone pliocene deposits of Mount Gambier, S.A., 

 are reported to be perfectly horizontal also. Woods tells us 

 that an area of many thousand square miles is " occupied by 

 one formation without alteration of level, break, or interrup- 

 tion. . . . The strata occur in nearly every case 

 parallel with the horizon"' (Geo. Obs. S. A., pp. 59, 60). 



The tall cliffs which wall in the Great Australian Bight 

 for hundreds of miles are reported to be fairly level through- 

 out the whole distance. 



A. TV. Howitt, writing of the Murray Plains in an official 

 report, remarks that " the elevation and depression of the 

 land from" far back in tertiary times have been equable and 

 regular over wide districts" (Geo. Sur. Vict., Yol. II., 

 p. 80). 



If we turn our eyes to South America we find exactly the 

 same condition of things. 



Although the east coast has no less than seven elevated 

 sea beaches, the topmost one being 1400 feet above the 

 ocean, there is no flexure to indicate movements of the 

 earth's crust, and no dislocation of the formations. Darwin 

 tells us that the beaches preserve an altitude which does not 

 vary 10 feet throughout a distance of 700 miles. They 

 excited on his part expressions of the utmost wonder from 

 their extraordinary degree of horizontal ity. On the west 

 coast, where volcanic action is elevating the surface, the 

 raised beaches can be traced for a distance of 2000 miles ; 

 but they, on the contrary, show the utmost irregularity in 

 altitude, and are much " thrown" in parts (Darwin's Notes 

 on Geo. of So. Am., pp. 53-55). 



The evidence of frequent alterations in the relative levels 

 of land and sea in the Southern Hemisphere is as abundant 

 as that of flexure and fracture in the superficial deposits of 

 the crust is rare. 



Oscillations of the ocean, due to cosmical causes, better fit 

 the conditions ; they explain all the facts more simply, and 

 they harmonise with the glacial theory. 



