58 AUSTRALIAN QUATERNARY CLIMATES AND MIGRATION 



River preceding its formation was contemporaneous with the 

 concluding - stages of the Tower Hill activity. It is therefore 

 apparent that the axe is more than 4,000 years old, and allowing 

 for the maturing of the valley XYD, its age is perhaps 6,000 

 years. The appearance of the sides of the hole sunk for the 

 power winch exclude the possibility of its having been from the 

 surface in a cache. 



The axe (PI. 2, Fig. 7) was of basalt and not complete. It has 

 a cutting-edge that may have been polished but now shows no 

 sign of it, and a haf ting-groove towards the head, most of which is 

 missing. It shows slight signs of patination but there was not 

 adherent matter; possibly the ash-matrix was not adherent. 

 Before it was covered with the uppermost layers of tuff (D. Fig 

 9) it was, doubtless, lying on the surface exposed to the elements. 



Mulder (1904) states that the meaning of native names for our 

 volcanoes indicates smoking, hot, ground such as Koroit [Tower 

 Hill] "suggesting that the natives saw the volcanoes when in 

 action, but at a period so remote that even the tradition had died 

 out, the names only surviving." This has been questioned but 

 legends — some have been already given — relating to volcanic activ- 

 ity have been recorded from so many of the tribes who lived on 

 the lava-plains and among the scoria-cones of western Victoria, 

 that there seems to be a germ of truth in them. That the aborigines 

 could visualize volcanic activity without some of them having seen 

 it, is inconceivable. 



Mr. Morgan, the owner of the property on which the axe was 

 found, stated that he found an axe in the tuffaceous limestone 

 where it is exposed on the side of the valley XYD with limy 

 material adhering to it ; he threw it into the river. 



The period when the Bushfield Axe was used is contempora- 

 neous with one of Hale and Tindale 's middle industries, but precise 

 correlation is impossible. 



Summarising the evidence of the artefacts found at Tartanga 

 and Devon Downs in South Australia, and those associated with 

 dunes and the volcanics of Victoria, such points to a Recent or 

 Postglacial age for them. In view of this, discussion here mostly 

 concerns climatic change during the Postglacial. 



IV. Bones Shaped by Man or Animals 



It must be conceded that Spencer and Walcott (1911) make out 

 a case for cuts on the bones of marsupials having been made by the 

 carnassial of Thylacoleo. In this they follow in the wake of De 

 Vis, whom they freely quote ; he had long recognized the work of 



