GEOLOGY OF NORTH GIPPSLAND, VICTORIA, 39 
products seem to be interstratified with aqueous beds. The remains 
of land-plants, the lithological characters and peculiarities of struc- 
ture of the beds, perhaps even the prevailing red colour of all the 
groups of this age (Upper Devonian), suggest to me the possibility 
that we may have here lacustrine rather than marine conditions, 
following the gradual emergence of land from the deep-sea areas 
of Middle Devonian periods, and, if so, yielding another singular 
parallel to observations made in Europe and remarked upon by 
Professor Ramsay *. 
The evidence, so far as it goes, suggests that volcanic activity 
may have become dormant in the east while it became active in the 
west, and also, as seen at the Snowy Bluff, that the volcanic 
materials changed from an acid to a basic character. 
A consideration of all the localities where I know strata to occur, 
which may not unreasonably be referred to the Upper Devonian 
group, of which the Iguana-Creek beds are the type, has led me to 
believe that, at the commencement of the deposition of those strata, 
denudation had almost proceeded to the extent which it has again 
gained. This may be seen at Mount Taylor, Tabberabbera, the 
Snowy Bluff, Cowombat, the Native-Dog Creek, and the Gibbo 
River. 
I have at present no evidence to advance as to the condition or 
the position of the Upper Devonian land. 
Future inquiries may possibly throw light on this obscure ques- 
tion ; and I look forward with some slight hope to an examination of 
the great and almost unknown mass of mountains between the 
sources of the Mitchell and Macallister Rivers, whose dark gorges 
may possibly yield as grand and instructive natural sections as the 
deep defiles of the Snowy River have done. 
Neither is there any light as to the conditions of what is now 
North Gippsland during all the long ages succeeding the Devonian 
until Tertiary times. The Avon Sandstones only show us that they 
were similar to those under which the Iguana-Creek beds were laid 
down. 
The denuding agencies which have removed the enormous thick- 
ness of the Avon and Iguana-Creek groups may certainly have at 
the same time stripped off superior and younger formations ; but, on 
the other hand, it is worthy of consideration that nowhere, so far as 
I know, have even traces of any strata of marine origin younger 
than Carboniferous been met with in the mountains of Hastern 
Victoria above the height of 2000 feet, or, excluding the Mesozoic 
Coal-measures, above the height of 1000 feet from the sea-level. 
Passing over the question whether the Mesozoic Carbonaceous 
rocks of South Gippsland ever extended over the whole, or even 
over the greater part, of North Gippsland, as it is evident the Upper 
Devonian and, perhaps, the Carboniferous formations once did, I 
may point out that all the groups of marine strata of Tertiary age 
* The only reference which I can at present make to Professor Ramsay’s 
paper is in a short summary in Professor Geikie’s edition of Jukes’s ‘Manual of 
Geology,’ p. 567. 
