18 On the Recent Earth-Tremors. 



The mass Laving now sunk, under pressure, to a lower 

 horizon — one nearer to the earth's centre — it has to pack 

 into a space too small for it. Consequently the margins of 

 the area cannot sink equally with the main body. The lips 

 opposed to each other appear to rise because all the adjacent 

 parts fall. In actual fact, mountains have been but little 

 elevated ; all around them has been lowered, till they stand 

 up prominently, and they mark to-day the sea-level of a 

 past epoch. 



The area itself now begins to assume the appearance of a 

 squeezed ice-floe, with its turned-up rim and sunken centre. 

 In the course of ages this slow piling up of the crushed con- 

 torted edges, and this gentle depression of the more level 

 but still fractured and flawed body, have created pronounced 

 physical features within the area under notice. Mountains 

 fringe it throughout an arc of over 200°, running parallel 

 with the co-seismal lines which I drew upon the map. They 

 rise at right-angles to the path of the earthquake wave, 

 which is just where we should look for them. They traverse 

 Tasmania with a meridianal axis ; they run N. E. from 

 Wilson's Promontory, and S. W. from Cape Howe. The plat- 

 form beneath this ring of mountains is rising also. The coast 

 of Victoria has risen within recent times. It has been 

 calculated that only 1400 years ago sea waves' played over 

 the Flemington race-course, and fretted the base of 

 Flemington hill. About the same period St. Kilcla was a 

 promontory jutting out between two shallow bays, one of 

 which covered the site of Albert Park, and the other that of 

 the El wood swamp. Brighton was under water. Frankston 

 was cut off from Cheltenham by a strait which united Port 

 Phillip with Western Port. A little earlier all the Gippsland 

 lowlands were submerged up to the foot of the ranges. I 

 can speak less confidently of the movement in Tasmania, but 

 I learn that there are raised beaches on the banks of the 

 Derwent, to tell of a receding ocean. 



Although I cannot say that the recent shocks have 

 travelled to New Zealand,, it is well to remember that 

 the west coasts of these islands have risen, in parts, 9 feet 

 during the last forty years, and a ship wrecked in 1814 

 now lies 200 yards inland. I have not heard that the 

 seafaring people of our coasts have noted any changes 

 in the sea marks, but the officers of vessels traversing 

 Bass's Straits believe that the waters are shoaling. 



It is probable that the west coast of New Zealand 



