170 Observations on some Metamorphic Rocks 



make it difficult at first to realise that they had not been laid 

 down by human hands. 



Had South Australia been longer inhabited, these bands 

 would have been invested with some traditionary history. Some 

 legend would probably give us a satisfactory reason for these 

 royal roads, perchance calling in the assistance of the giants 

 who balanced the rocking stones on the coast of Cornwall, or 

 who fought with boulders at Stonehenge. The country where 

 the phenomenon is most apparent, may be included in a square 

 bounded on the north by Clare, on the south by Watervale, on 

 the west by the Wakefield scrub, and on the east by Mintaro and 

 FarreFs Flat. This tract encloses some of the most beautiful 

 scenery in the colony. The hills, sometimes abrupt and some- 

 times gently undulating, are covered with a rich vegetation, 

 bearing large trees, which, raising their branches in the 

 air, throw their shadows on some huge rock, which 

 seems like a gem embedded in the shrubs and ferns below. 

 Grassy slopes break out here and there, and these combined 

 with a multitude of flowing brooks, bring back to one's recol- 

 lection that union of peace and sublimity which is so common 

 at home. 



To return to the bands of stone. In trying to account for them 

 I was led into a series of observations, which would carry me 

 much beyond the limits of an ordinary paper to attempt to 

 describe. I must endeavour then to give only what bears upon 

 the subject, and all imperfect as my solution is, I am en- 

 couraged by knowing the matter must fall into abler hands 

 than mine : for it is too remarkable to be left alone for any 

 length of time, being in my opinion, quite as singular and as 

 unparalleled as the far-famed parallel roads in the Highlands 

 of Scotland. I have said the bands rim a little on one side of 

 the top of the chains of hills. They are also found in the 

 valleys or troughs between the ridges, only with this difference, 

 that the band, which in its. passage goes along the hills, is 

 composed of small fragments of stone, while those which run 

 in the valley are composed of boulders. The higher the chain 

 too, the smaller are the fragments and vice versa. Both bands 

 and hills run parallel, and the direction is north 12° west, 

 and though the bands are continued over the hills, and in the 

 valleys, wherever a gap or break in the chain occurs, they never 

 are on the highest part of the ridges or anticlinal axis, but 

 always at an equal distance away from it, perhaps about ten 

 yards. At first sight, it would be said these are volcanic dykes. 

 Had they been so, there would have been nothing remarkable in 



