276 Glacial Epoch of Australia. 
ence to the equatorial currents, before we can find a vera 
CHUSH. 
But it is evident that the geologist who on examining the 
youngest marine III. beds along the east coast, had pro- 
nounced thatno suchepoch ever existedin New Zealand, would 
come to a different conclusion after making a journey inland; 
the more so if he should happen to travel along the western 
coast of this province, where, for more than one hundred 
miles, morainic accumulations, from either continuous walls 
or bold headlands, against which the sea has for ages con- 
tinued its work of destruction and rearrangement. | 
Doubtless the observations of the Rev. J. E. Woods are 
exceedingly valuable and interesting, but they are, in my 
opinion, of a purely negative character only, and do not show 
that when the lower portions of the New Zealand glaciers 
during their greatest extension reached the sea, and were 
washed off and carried away in the form of huge icebergs, 
into the Pacific Ocean, the climate of the southern portion 
of Australia, and of the neighbouring seas, was not similarly 
affected as that of New Zealand. 
That peculiar climatological conditions exist even at the 
present time, by which glaciers in temperate regions can 
reach the sea, has been conclusively proved by Darwin, who 
traced glaciers producing icebergs, in deep fiords and bays 
on the west coast of South America, in latitudes correspond- 
ing to Stewart Island, and which descend from mountain 
ranges much less elevated than our New Zealand Alps. 
It is in those bays and along the coast of that interesting 
region, where very valuable data are offered to us, showing 
how far the refrigerating influence of huge icebergs detached 
from the terminal face, affects animal and vegetable life when 
compared principally with bays and coasts of the same 
country, where no glacial action is going on. 
The dredge will doubtless prove satisfactorily that a more 
antarctic or stunted fauna exists in the bays or in the open 
seas of South America, which are under glacial influence, 
than in those portions of the east Pacific Ocean near the 
same coast, but which is not traversed by icebergs, although 
both are situated in the cold antarctic or Humboldt current. 
Let us hope.that future explorers of these regions will devote 
some time to the investigation of such a highly important 
subject, which will no doubt offer us some curious facts for 
comparison. 
I have elsewhere (“ Report on the Formation of the Can- 
