OCCURRENCE OF A SUBMERGED FOREST. 161 
this low lying country along the east coast of Australia then 
existed, it must have been covered by the Miocene Sea, and 
doubtless some portions of the Miocene strata of that period would 
have escaped denudation, and have remained as those have which 
are seen in Victoria and elsewhere ; but it is very probable that 
until or during the Pliocene period it stood at a much higher level 
and extended some distance beyond the present coast line. Then 
again the Tertiary deposits throughout east Australia show that 
the valleys draining the Great Dividing Range have been chiefly 
eroded since the Miocene period, for we find deep valleys and 
ravines cutting through later Tertiary formations ; therefore, the 
sinking of the land traversed by any of these valleys, such as that 
of Port J ackson, evidently took place in comparatively recent 
geological times, and may have been contemporaneous with the 
extensive volcanic eruptions of the Upper Pliocene Period during 
which the southern portion of Victoria especially was the locale 
of great volcanic activity.” 
In 1886, Mr. Walter Howchin, F.¢.8.,! recorded evidence of a 
Supposed land surface submerged about twenty-six feet below sea- 
level, (high water) at Glanville, near Adelaide. The evidence is 
in the form of a crust of travertine capped by brown clay. In 
the absence, however, of land fossils, the evidence, as the author 
points out, is inconclusive. 
Reference has been made by one of the authors to the occur- 
rence of black loam and peat extending from about sixteen feet 
to thirty-six feet below low water at Narrabeen lagoon, about 
nine miles northerly from Sydney.” This is probable though not 
conclusive evidence as to submergence, as the peaty loam may 
Possibly have been originally deposited .below sea-level. Further 
evidence as to submergence along the eastern coast of Australia 
has been quoted by the same author in his Presidential Address 
for 1896 to this Society. 
oo Roy. Soc., South Australia, Vol. 1x., 1886-7, pp. 31 - 35. 
, rig “es Report Department of Mines, 1890, p. 236. Report by 
‘ .E. David. By Authority, Sydney, 1891. io 
K—Aug. 5, 1996, ; 
