2 A. W. HOWITT ON THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY AND 
different system which promised to be not entirely barren of results. 
Being required to visit constantly the gold-fields in all parts of North 
Gippsland east of the Mitehell River, I believed that by varying the 
route from place to place as much as possible, and by making use of 
those routes as lines of investigation, | might in course of time 
cover the whole district with, as it were, a network of traverses on 
which illustrative sections might be constructed. 
This I have done so far as was possible to me; and wherever I 
found points of interest requiring further illustration, I have worked 
out those special localities with more detail. A long-continued 
series of aneroid readings has furnished me with the means of 
working out the sections with some degree of certainty. Finally, 
on the data thus obtained, I have constructed three main sections 
approximately across the general strike of the older sedimentary 
strata, and three other sections approximately at right angles to the 
former. 
Where feature-surveys were available I have used them; but 
where, as unfortunately was too often the case, there were none, I 
have made sueh traverses with the compass, estimating the distance 
by the watch or by pacing, as would furnish me with fairly reliable 
data. 
The knowledge which I have gained of the geology of the district 
has therefore resulted from actual inspection in the field; and it will 
be for geologists to say whether my interpretation of facts and the 
inferences which I have drawn therefrom are well grounded or not. 
In these notes I propose to summarize the general results at 
which I have arrived. The details are partly contained in the 
‘Reports of Progress of the Geological Survey of Victoria,’ and 
partly in papers which are now in process of completion*. 
The sketch sections given in this paper do not pretend to repre- 
sent the exact features of any one locality; but I have endeavoured 
to portray in them, in a condensed form, that which I have observed 
in the field, and at the same time to do so in accordance with the 
results shown by the sections I have referred to. 
The encouraging assistance of friends has not been wanting. I 
am under great obligations to Professor M‘Coy, of Melbourne Uni- 
versity, for examining the collections of fossils which I have made 
and for indicating their geological age; to Mr. C. H. F. Ulrich, 
F.G.8., of the Industrial and Technological Museum, Melbourne, 
who has most kindly aided me by examining collections of rocks in 
comparison with those of the Technological Museum in Melbourne ; 
and to Mr. R. Brough Smyth, F.G.S., the Seeretary for Mines, &c., 
under whose direction the Geological Survey of this Colony has been 
resumed, for every assistance which a long-standing friendship and 
a warm interest in the geological examination of the Colony could 
suggest. It was in consequence of a suggestion made by my friend 
Mr. R. Brough Smyth some years ago that I determined to attempt 
systematically the geological examination of North Gippsland. 
* The papers now in hand are “On the Devonian Rocks of North Gipps- 
land” and “ Section 1 of the Geological Structure of North Gippsland.” 
