6 Evidences of a Glacial Epoch in Victoria 



streams may rapidly transport material that the current,, 

 unaided, could never stir. Glaciers carve into the moun- 

 tains, and scoop valleys and lakes out of stony plains. They 

 level hills, and till up valleys with the spoil. They carry 

 debris as far as they go, and then drop it in huge mounds ; 

 or, if they are situated on a water edge, they transfer it to 

 bergs and floes, which distribute it still more widely. As a 

 transporting agency, ice is the most powerful known. In 

 the present age its potency is restricted by the moderate 

 climatic conditions prevailing. But there have been periods 

 when very different conditions held sway, and this agent 

 was then free to operate upon a grander scale, and over vast 

 regions of the earth now outside its influences. The zones, 

 now temperate, show land surfaces teeming with the evi- 

 dence of its vast mechanical powers. 



If Victoria has ever had a climate which would supply the 

 ice required for boulder transport, we ought to find some 

 evidence of the fact besides simple boulder washes. 



The characteristic signs of intense ice action consist in 

 rock strise, or scratches, more or less parallel ; in glacial lake 

 basins, in rounded rock surfaces, and hills of flowing out- 

 line; in the debris, the litter, the refuse of their work, 

 strewed sometimes in heaps, and at other times spread out 

 in sheets of clay, sand, and rock fragments. Lastly, we have 

 the loess, or loamy secondary product — the sifted-out grind- 

 ing^ of the icemill, washed out of the coarser stuff by the 

 snow waters, and swept down the slopes in muddy torrents 

 to be dropped quietly in the still reaches of the flooded 

 plains, and in the shallow sea margins, as a mantle of fertile 

 alluvium. 



Let us now see whether any such traces of glacial action 

 — which can be assigned to post-miocene times — have been 

 discovered in Victoria. 



I will preface the evidence I shall produce by admitting 

 that the indications, if viewed separately, are ambiguous ; but 

 if they are regarded all together they show such a converg- 

 ing trend upon the part of a large number of small facts 

 that they carry conviction ; for they all, to my mind, point 

 toward a period of great climatic extremes not far remote 

 in a geological sense. 



Taking rock markings first, their occurrence here has been 

 questioned by many. I do not claim to have seen any 

 myself, but Mr. Wm. Lee, a practical miner of experience, 

 assures me that he has seen ice striations near Wilson's 



