302 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [May 26, 



of chertified clay-ironstone and quartzite may be seen at their point 

 of contact. 



M'^Coy alleges the existence of cretaceous rocks about the upper 

 part of the Flinders, not far from the western part of the base of 

 the peninsula, which is interesting in connexion with their possible 

 presence on the same side of the eastern backbone at its southern 

 end near Melbourne and the great Australian bight, and also in 

 "Western Australia, doubtless in relation to that coast-range. No 

 grooving or scratching of rocks, boulder-deposts, or other evidence 

 of glacial action has anywhere been observed along this north-east 

 coast, or at the pointed northern extremity of the Cape-York penin- 

 sula. 



Thus Eastern Australia has its Posttertiary as well as its Ter- 

 tiary, Secondary, Palaeozoic, and Azoic formations, in addition to the 

 ordinary igneous basis on which they rest ; and their presence tends 

 to confirm the opinion expressed by the Rev. W. B. Clarke as to the 

 parallelism and agreement (with a few exceptions, which perhaps 

 future discover}^ will remove) between these systems of the Austra- 

 lasian pro\dnce (in which he includes Australia proper, with the 

 islands of Tasmania to the southward, New Zealand to the south- 

 east, New Caledonia to the east, and Papua to the northward) and 

 those of its antipodes, and to show that it is highly probable that 

 the same geological formations exist here as in Europe, and that the 

 same great laws were concerned in developing them. Little more 

 can be done than to make dubious conjectures as to the geology of 

 Papua; for even its coast remains unexplored, and our knowledge, if 

 it may be so called, is merely subjective and based chiefly on evidence 

 derived from stray facts and comparison of its physical features with 

 those of other, and particularly neighbouring, islands. 



Though a non-volcanic country, with one trivial exception (Mount 

 Wingen, in the Liverpool range, 120 miles north from Sydney), 

 Australia is occasionally subject to earthquake-shocks or earth waves, 

 doubtless propagated from neighbouring true volcanic centres, e. g. 

 New Zealand to the south-east and New Caledonia and the islands 

 of the Indian Archipelago to the east and north, and sometimes 

 perhaps from more distant regions. A slight shock was evident at 

 Cape York in March, 1865, and a stronger one during December, 1866. 

 Equally interesting is the evidence that the north-east, if not the 

 whole of the east coast of Australia, is slowly rising, to be found in 

 the gradual shoaling of the channel between Hinchinbrook Island and 

 the mainland (lat. 18|° S.), which is due, to all appearance, neither to 

 silting up nor to the growth of coral — in the presence of water- worn 

 caves in the sandstone cliffs of Albany island and those of the main- 

 land opposite, now well above high- water mark — and in the existence 

 along many parts of the coast, especially towards the northern end 

 of the peninsula, of extensive tracts of level country now covered with 

 sand-dunes bearing a scanty vegetation stretching inland and on either 

 side to the base of lofty hills now ten, fifteen, or twenty miles off, 

 but which had once closely bordered the sea, the whole looking as if 

 they had once been under water. Corroborative evidence of this will 



