38 PROF. J. W. GREGORY ON THE [Feb. I904, 



outliers, resting upon Ordovician rocks and upon a series of schists 

 which are probably Arch yean. 



The chief peaks of the West-Coast Range, taken in order from 

 south to north, are Mount Sorell, Mount Darwin, Mount Jukes, 

 Mount Huxley, Mount Owen, Mount Lyell, Mount Sedgwick, 

 Mount Tyndall, Mount Geikie, Mount Read, and Mount Murchison. 

 West of this line is a broad peneplain composed of contorted slates 

 and sandstones, with some limestones, of Lower Palaeozoic age. The 

 surface slopes westward towards an old coast -line, several hundred 

 feet above the present sea-level. East of the West-Coast Range, 

 and separated from it by the valley of the King and Murchison 

 Rivers, is the great Central Plateau of Tasmania. This plateau is 

 composed, in the main, of Silurian and Carboniferous rocks, which 

 are covered unconformably by a broad sheet of Mesozoic diabase, 

 represented on Mr. R. M. Johnston's map of the Geology of Tasmania 

 as forming the surface of the main part of the tableland. The 

 southern part of the West-Coast Range is drained by the King River 

 and its tributaries. This river flows past the eastern base of Mounts 

 Sedgwick, Lyell, and Owen, and then cuts across the Range in a 

 canon between Mounts Huxley and Jukes. It bends northward 

 and is joined by the Queeu River, which drains the western slopes 

 of the range from Mount Sedgwick to Mount Owen. The Linda 

 River, also a tributary of the King, occupies a broad valley eroded 

 along a fault-line ; it breaks through the West-Coast Range, between 

 Mount Owen on the south and Mount Lyell on the north. 



A high ridge capped by diabase, and known as the Eldon Range, 

 runs out westward from the main Central Plateau ; an outlier of 

 this ridge forms the peak of Mount Sedgwick. Farther north 

 is Cradle Mountain, a bold bluff forming the north-western corner 

 of the Central Plateau. The streams from this mountain flow 

 either directly into the Pieman River, or northward, past Mounts 

 Romulus and Remus, into the Mackintosh River, the upper part 

 of the Pieman. The country around the Mackintosh is a broad 

 plateau, through which the rivers flow in deep and narrow gorges 

 of recent age. The Pieman River flows directly into the Southern 

 Ocean, while the King River flows into Macquarie Harbour, near 

 the town of Strahan. 



III. Previous Records. 



A brief summary of previous work on this subject will, I think, be 

 useful, as the literature is scattered and its interpretation in Europe 

 may be somewhat difficult. 



The first recognition of glacial action in Tasmania was apparently 

 in the ' fifties,' by Charles Gould, formerly the Government Geologist 

 of Tasmania. His observations were never published ; but his con- 

 clusions were verbally handed down, and have been referred to by 

 Mr. 11. M. Johnston, 1 who, in 1888, on the strength of this evidence, 



1 'The Glacier-Epoch of Australasia' Proc. Roy. Soc. Tasm. vol. iv, 189o 

 (1894) p. 92. 



