AN AUSTRALIAN PARALLEL 417 
The physiography of the eastern coast of Australia 
has been subjected to a somewhat detailed investigation 
during the last ten years, with the result that it is found 
to exhibit splendid examples of subsidence, trough fault- 
ing, and rivers ' drowned ' by the sea. Great slices of the 
coast have sunk below the waves fairly lately in geological 
times, so that many of the great rivers of Eastern Australia 
now rise on the present coast (the old divide) and flow 
inland to the central lowlands. The features character- 
istic of this portion of the crust are therefore an elevated 
coastal region sloping gradually to the west and sharply 
truncated by ' faults ' on the east. 
Let us now journey southward to Antarctica and 
take a birdseye view of the coast of the Ross Sea and 
of the great mountain range which leads from the Ross 
Sea and McMurdo Sound almost to the Pole. We notice 
at once that this range extends almost due north and 
south, as was the case in Australia, that it practically 
constitutes the shore line, that it has a steep eastern 
slope — often dropping ten thousand feet in a few miles — 
and that it descends gradually on the west to a uniform 
land mass of a plateau type. 
It seems evident that these points of resemblance 
are not accidental. The great earth movements which 
affected Australia in middle and late Tertiary times 
also affected Antarctica. A readjustment of equilibrium 
raised the west and depressed the east in both continents. 
The central portion of Australia, consisting of ancient 
rocks which have been planed down to a uniform level 
by the normal agents of erosion — by rivers, wind, &c. — 
VOL. II. 2 E 
