115 



occurrence in the sand dunes at various points on the southern 

 coast line of this continent is now well known. 



Though I cannot disabuse my mmd of the belief that the 

 whole front of the Bunda cliffs was once faced with blown 

 sands, in continuation of the now terminal portions, yet I cannot 

 reconcile it with the fact of the existence of deep water so near 

 the shore of a coast line without a beach, without admitting 

 the necessity of some considerable elevation to form a beach. 

 The truncated littoral margin of the cliffs of consolidated sand 

 evidences loss by marine denudation, and extension seaward. 

 The depression that is demanded by the present position of the 

 recent marine deposits of Roe Plains, Talata Swamp, &c, 

 militates against the opinion that the consolidated blown sands 

 and marine deposits are synchronous. In fact, the only 

 explanation to meet the requirements of the case is that during 

 the formation of the consolidated sand the coast line was much 

 further seaward than now ; since then a depression, perhaps 

 not exceeding twenty to thirty feet, below present sea level, 

 followed by an elevation which seems to be progessing at this 

 time. 



The higher antiquity of the consolidated sands may be 

 indicated by the use of the term "Pleistocene," whilst the later 

 deposits may be spoken of as "Recent Marine" and "Sand 

 Dunes." 



The oolitic limestones described by Eyre as covering much of 

 the surface of the eountry from Fowler's Bay to beyond the 

 Head of the Bight can only be the travertines and sand rocks 

 containing fragments of limestones, such as I have described at 

 Fowler's Point. 



The fragments in these limestone breccias, or as enclosed in 

 concretionary travertine, are usually black, irregular in outline, 

 and their surfaces more often pitted or weathered ; from which 

 appearance one might be well excused from committing the 

 error, on a cursory examination, of calling them scoriae. One 

 source of the black discoloration of the usually light-coloured 

 tertiary limestones is the carbonization of the fatty matter of 

 animals which has penetrated into the stones, in the process of 

 cooking a V aborigine ; and is probably the true explanation of 

 the black nuclei to the concretionary travertines which are not 

 unfrequently found on the cliff tops over the River Murray and 

 about the shores of St. Vincent's Gulf. But on the Bunda 

 Plateau, such stones are too widely spread, and often too far 

 from the haunts of the aboriginals to have been blackened by 

 such agency. My attention was aroused too late in my 

 journeyings to make any very extended observations, but this 

 much I noticed— that the samphire-covered depressions (see 

 post p. 120), where surrounded by outcrops of limestones, were 



