1855.] CLARKE FOSSIL BONES IN AUSTRALIA. 407 



beneath the alluvial soil at Galandaddai, near Melville Plains, at a 

 depth below the surface varying from 15 to 1 00 feet ; at Dart Brook 

 in the Basin of the Hunter ; on Paterson River ; and as far north as 

 the head of the Dawson River ; besides some places east of the Main 

 Chain between Darling Downs and the Moreton Bay country. They 

 are thus found throughout a range of eleven degrees of latitude, and 

 at heights varying from 100 feet below, to 1600 feet and upwards 

 above the sea-level. Mr. Stutchbury has reported other localities 

 besides those enumerated, in the same range of country. 



It is not probable that the destruction of all the animals of which 

 there are relics was at one time ; but it does appear that their en- 

 tombment in alluvial deposits at such varied elevations, if by one 

 catastrophe, would imply the march of waters over the whole of this 

 part of the continent of New Holland. And, there are geological 

 reasons for concluding, that as in California, so in New South Wales, 

 a great part of the now dry interior was under water at the time 

 when these gigantic creatures were buried ; and it is probable their 

 destruction at last was connected with the final outbreak of igneous 

 forces which changed the horizon of considerable tracts, draining by 

 disruption many local reservoirs, and introducing a state of things 

 incompatible with the existence of animals which required conditions 

 of life which only now obtain in an inferior degree. In California, 

 "volcanic tufa" covers the "diluvial drift" which contains the re- 

 mains of gigantic mammals ; and in the interior plains of New Hol- 

 land, black soil, the disintegrated spoils of numerous trappean over- 

 flows, covers up wide tracts of alluvial deposits, in and below which 

 are found the relics of Macropus, Diprotodon, Nototheriuniy Croco- 

 diles and other Saurians *, and, as recently discovered by Mr. Stutch- 

 bury, the remains of Fish f . 



Whatever be the epoch of the last trappean eruptions (and there 

 is no real datum upon which to found a belief in the absence of the 

 secondary and older tertiary formations) in New South Wales, this 

 however is certain, that in some localities gold has been drifted 

 (though apparently not very far) and deposited contemporaneously 

 with the now fossilized remains of animals that lived close up to the 

 historic period, if not within it ; but at the same time it must be 

 observed, that the disintegration of the auriferous rocks from which 

 the gold was accumulated commenced long before, and in the case of 

 still existing gold-bearing veins and beds has not yet been completed. 



If the occurrence of volcanic bombs (as illustrated in another 

 paper %) in the auriferous alluvium of the Turon, on which the bones 

 are found, as well as of the Uralla River, be considered with reference 

 to igneous agents as causes of surface phaenomena, as well as of 

 destruction of animal life, it will be seen that, though the distance of 

 the Turon is 160 miles from the Uralla, and there is no topogra- 



* See Rev. W. B. Clarke's Report to the Government of New South Wales, on 

 the Geology of the Basin of the Condamine River, (No. 10) 14th October 1853. 

 t See Mr. Stutchbury's Twelfth Report from South Brisbane, 1 January, 1854. 

 + See above, p. 403. 



