99. 



Notes on some Evidences of 



passage from unaltered slates to completely metamorphosed 

 schists may be well seen — the slates occupying the fall 

 towards the Dargo River, and the crystalline schists that of 

 the Victoria Valley. 



This creek traverses generally well- timbered pastoral 

 country, the geological structure composed principally of 

 metamorphic schists, which are penetrated by numerous 

 cliabasic, dioritic, and porphyritic dykes. At various bends 

 in the valley, where it narrows, masses of water-worn 

 shingle and igneous boulders are seen associated with what 

 is evidently a morainic debris of metamorphic schists, igneous 

 dykes and granite, left probably by a retreating subsidiary 

 glacier which once filled the valley. The watershed being 

 so small, there does not seem to be any possibility of running 

 water having deposited these masses of debris in the situation 

 where they now occur. At the junction of the two streams 

 some of the more dense boulders of andesite are seen to 

 be striated in a similar manner to the specimens, No. 1, now 

 exhibited in illustration of this paper. About two miles 

 further on — below Parslow's homestead — several small water- 

 courses enter from the south : the principal of these from a 

 locality known as Victoria Plains, a natural ice-scooped 

 basin in the valley to the south, presenting on the whole a 

 distinctively moutonne aspect. It was Victoria Plains that 

 the Vice-Regal party, accompanied by the Surveyor-General 

 and late Secretary for Mines, passed through en route from 

 Omeo to Bright, and the scenery of which is so eloquently 

 described in their narrative, page 38, of "Physical Resources 

 of North Gippsland," that I cannot refrain from quoting it, 

 as follows : — " We diverged from our path in order to see 

 Victoria Plains; we saw it with the afternoon sun on it. 

 It is not flat, but slightly undulating ; it is in the form of 

 long, low smooth banks or ridges running parallel to each 

 other, with hollows not so deeply sculptured as to become 

 watercourses. The lights thrown across the furrowed 

 surface, gilding the low ranges and leaving the hollows in 

 shadow, lent a beauty to this sequestered spot which under 

 other circumstances it might not present ; set in a frame of 

 forest, itself destitute of timber and richly grassed, it made 

 a picture altogether strange and startling, entering upon it 

 as we did suddenly and with no idea of the character of 

 the landscape which was to open to our view." The smooth 

 banks or ridges — sowbacks — above referred to are, I think, 

 clearly due to glacial abrasion. An examination of the 



