Port of Melbourne. 69 



In reply to the allegation that the Yarra has at various 

 times debouched by different outlets between St. Kilda and 

 Williamstown into the Bay, I fail to see any grounds for 

 such assertions, for the statement is almost too absurd for 

 refutation, that because there is a slight depression in made 

 ground it must at some time or other have been a water 

 course. 



The arguments are based on a fallacy, and cannot in my 

 opinion be justified by analogy or by reason ; and, were it 

 not for the repetition of these views from time to time, I 

 would not again recur to them, having in the previous 

 paper dealt with the question, but it is perhaps better to risk 

 a slight repetition than uncertainty or obscurity on this 

 point. 



Before the low-lying lands around Emerald Hill were 

 formed, the Yarra must have entered the Bay about the 

 site of Prince's Bridge, and as the land made by precipitation 

 from its waters, by silt and by drift, the embouchure would 

 gradually be forced along in the direction of its present 

 channel, and the singular formation of the river at Humbug 

 Reach is one of the strongest possible evidences of such 

 growth. 



It is quite possible and probable that in times of flood, 

 such as in the year 1863, the surcharged waters overflowing 

 their banks would pass away over the low flats in a direct 

 line for the Bay, but this is quite a diflerent matter to the 

 bold assertions made, that such courses are the old fiUed-in 

 beds of the Yarra, or that the Yarra in its normal condition 

 ever flowed in any other channel than its present one. 



That views such as are enunciated in this and the preceding 

 paper are correct, and proven as far as such things can be 

 proven, are amply illustrated by analogy with similar causes 

 and results of both the past and the present. 



In this country, as elsewhere, we have ample evidence 

 that from remote ages climatic agencies have been much the 

 same as in modern times, and that storms of thousands of 

 years ago prevailed from the same quarter of the heavens as 

 in the present day. 



The extinct volcanoes of the West give evidence of this 

 fact in the deposition of ashes, scoriae, and tufa on what 

 must have been the leeward of the Hill then, as it is the lee- 

 ward now, during bad weather. 



Tower Hill, near Warrnambool, is a case in point, where 

 the greatest preponderance of volcanic ash and tufa lies 



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