AUSTRALIAX QUATERNARY CLIMATES AND MIGRATION 47 



trench— 69 feet— in the yellow clay were pieces of bone in nearly every shovel 

 full, samples I am forwarding you. [Mr. Merry says in letter 23 July '09 that 

 bones also in last foot of black clay.] I have been' told by men who excavated 

 the drain in the first place, that from end to end about 2 miles in length, they 

 took out bones in cart loads and all in the clay, some feet under the sand- 

 stone." . . . 



In reply to questions Mr. Merry adds, "The implement was embedded with 

 the bones in the yellow clay, it was impossible for it to have fallen in from the 

 overlying beds and I was very careful with it, as when I struck it with the 

 shovel I thought it was a large bone, and wanted to get it out without breaking 

 it. It was 3 feet in from the bed of the drain, and 2 feet below same in the 

 solid clay under the sandstone 3 feet in width which I had cut away." 

 In a later letter he states "I showed it to Dr. Breaton [sic] in its rough state 

 at the works with the yellow clay adhering to it, and he did not notice that it 

 was an implement. I then took it home and washed all the clay off it, and 

 could see that it was a piece of stone implement." Mr. Merry also states that 

 well sinkers have found bones at depths of over 100 feet under the "sandstone" 

 bearing out his experience quoted before. Mr. R. Harvie, one of the men who 

 worked in the opening of the drain in the first place, informed Mr. Merry that 

 he dug up a stone implement, said to be a grindstone, about a chain below the 

 culvert, 9 feet from the surface, which is about the top of the yellow clay, and 

 4 feet below the "sandstone." He also told Mr. Merry that' they dug up a 

 "Petrified Skull" with the teeth intact, but they placed no value on it, and after 

 knocking the teeth out, threw it on one side. This skull was found about 100 

 yards to the west of the culvert with a number of fossil bones just on top of a 

 bed of "buckshot gravel" about 5 feet under the "sandstone" .... In another 

 letter Mr. Merry writes "Whilst removing some clay I had previously thrown 

 out from the excavations I came on another broken implement, this time of a 

 dark blue colour. ... I missed seeing it when I first threw it out, I think it 

 must have been in a big spit, and the clay all round it hid it from my view." 

 Although he does not know what part of the trench it came from he is positive 

 it came from below the sandstone. It should be mentioned here, that the sand- 

 stone Mr. Merry refers to is not sandstone but a compact bedded tuff which is 

 locally known as sandstone. 



We have no reasonable cause to take exception to the authenticity of the first 

 implement found by Mr. Merry. He is a man whose statements are reliable 

 and who had, moreover, no knowledge of the interest attached to the discovery, 

 and personal enquiries only bore out the correctness of his statements. The 

 only doubt then must be as to whether the implements could possibly have 

 fallen in the trench from above. Mr. Merry is most emphatic that such was 

 not the case and as the bottom of the trench was lower than the drain and bones 

 were also found with the implement there can be no doubt that the ground has 

 not been disturbed since their deposition. . . . 



The other implement found by Mr. Merry and described by him as being of 

 a "dark blue colour" is formed of a small boulder of fine-grained laminated 

 basalt. It weighs about 3J pounds and represents roughly a little more than 

 half the boulder. It has been roughly chipped on both sides of one end to 

 produce a rough cutting edge, forming a by no means uncommon implement 

 called by Messrs. Kenyon and Stirling in their scheme of classification an axe 

 chipped on both sides. With the exception of a fracture made by Mr. Merry, 

 the surface is of a dull light bluish-grey colour, due to weathering. The variety 

 of basalt is quite distinct to that occurring locally and the fact that the 

 implement has been made from a boulder proves that its source must have 



