40 A. W. HOWITT ON THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY AND 
are horizontal, or merely lie at very low angles; that the highest 
beds thin out on the flanks of the mountains at elevations nowhere 
exceeding 1000 feet, and probably not averaging more than 600-— 
700 feet above sea-level; and, further, that similar statements also 
apply to the Murray-River Tertiaries to the north of the Great 
Dividing Range. 
A careful consideration of the interesting features presented by 
the deep leads of the Ovens District on the north side of the 
mountains, and of the Gippsland Marine Tertiaries on the south 
side, has led me to the belief that at the close of the Miocene or the 
commencement of the Pliocene period, the land-surface of Hastern 
Victoria probably did not differ essentially in its physical features 
from what is seen now, but that it stood at least some 300—400 feet 
lower, relatively to the sea-level, than it now does. 
I perceive, further, that the upper margin of the Tertiary marine 
beds is now some 600-700 feet above the sea; and we have thus 
represented to us continuously, from the Miocene period inclusive, a 
high mountainous country falling in elevation to the westward, and 
having the sea on the south, and varying conditions of land and 
water to the west and north*. 
The fact that different genera of fish are found in the waters 
flowing from the north and south sides of the Australian Alps points 
to a high antiquity of the land-surface, and to a long continuance of 
the watershed. 
Whatever may be the conclusions arrived at in respect to the 
continuity, duration, and elevation above the sea of the land-surface 
during Mesozoic times, it cannot, I think, be doubted that the 
Gippsland mountains have existed as dry land continuously since 
the earlier part of the Tertiary age. 
A difficulty may be felt to arise from the fact that we have at 
Bacchus Marsh Miocene beds with plant-remains of “a totally 
different facies to the recent flora of the country, . . . an entirely 
extinct series of species, having generic and general resemblance to 
the feliage ct Asiatic plants of tropical types of Dicotyledonous 
plants’’>. It seems to me that such a difficulty may possibly be 
more apparent than real. In Eastern Gippsland we find at present, 
in the coast-lands and the river-valleys, a flora which has been 
described by Baron v. Miller as being of an Indian type, before 
which the Hucalyptus-vegetation recedes f. 
The inland mountains and plateaux show essentially the ordinary 
flora of Victoria. If a subsidence of the land were to cause the 
present flora of the littoral country to become fossilized, and a re- 
elevation of the land were subsequently to take place, it might be that 
* So far as I now remember, the Oligocene beds of Mount Martha at Port- 
Philip Bay, which are the oldest Tertiary deposits with which I am acquainted, 
also conform to the generally horizontal position of all the Tertiary groups. 
+ Professor M‘Coy, Intercolonial-Hxhibition Essays, 1866-67, ‘‘ Recent 
Zoology and Palxontology of Victoria,’ p. 16; also Geological Survey of 
Victoria, Quarter-sheet, No. 12, N.H., notes 5 and 12. 
t Catalogue of the Victorian Exhibition, 1861. Essay by Ferd. Miller, M.D., 
Ph.D., F.RBS., &e. 
