22 A. W. HOWITIT ON THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY AND 
the place I speak of, that, in shafts sunk through the detritus in the 
beds of those streams among the porphyritic hills, slates and lime- 
stones similar to those in the Limestone River are found as the bed- 
rock. 
In the valley of the Native-Dog Creek where that stream has cut 
through the thin remains of Upper Devonian fossiliferous limestones 
and shales into the underlying porphyries, several masses of meta- 
morphosed sedimentary rocks of a most remarkable character are re- 
vealed protruding from the peaty soil and snow-grass. These have 
apparently been calcareous shales, but are now calcareous schists of 
a pale yellowish or nearly white colour, and are not only extremely 
altered, but are bent into the most abrupt angular contortions. I 
may roughly represent the appearance of these schists thus :— 
Fig. 7.—Contorted Schists, Native-Dog Creek. 
They present no similarity to any of the metamorphic schists of 
North Gippsland which I have ever seen. ButI have observed that 
among the limestones and slates of the Limestone River there are 
thin calcareous bands which may represent the comparatively un- 
altered condition of the schists of the Native-Dog Creek. Further 
to the southward down the same stream, but above Fanwick, is 
another patch of shales and crystalline limestones, here also altered 
in an unusual manner, but somewhat similar to those I have just 
described. They appear in a deep valley from under the great por- 
phyritic tableland. From these appearances I believe that the in- 
dicated extension of the Limestone-River strata is not inconsistent 
with the probable truth. 
In mentally looking over the whole district, I perceive that here 
and there mountains or ridges of quartz-porphyries stand out from 
the “ Snowy-River Porphyries” or in their neighbourhood, in the 
latter cases being often in the Marine Tertiary areas, from which 
they rise as isolated hills. Taking the Wombargo Mountain as an 
example, I notice that grouped round the central mass of quartz- 
porphyries there are immense thicknesses of successive accumulations 
of ash, agglomerates, and felstones, which, where the deeply cut 
ravines show the vertical structure, are often clearly seen to be not 
only bedded, but also seamed with dykes of compact pale-coloured 
felstone. These appearances are seen in descending from Wombargo 
