30 
ing and removing inland from sea margins, except in a few 
localities, where, from action of the tide-ripple, or the surface 
waves, readily-breached formations are undermined, and the 
sea advances on portions of the land ; though actually 
shallowing on the same coast, and the rock sea bottom rising 
to view. This phenomenon is constantly presented to our 
notice on Victorian coasts, but is referred, by shallow rea- 
soners, and non-observers, to "silting up" of harbours, 
&0.j and an imaginary progressive growth or demit km of 
the land. The test question to be answered is this. Be 
the land rising, or the sea receding, and leaving the land, 
where does the water go ? We may note a most remarkable 
change of aspect on the shores of Port Phillip within the 
last fifteen or twenty years. The sands are denuded from 
the bed rocks at bottom at all points subject to shallow wave 
action. The rocks disclosed have sharp, unwater-worn 
points, and angles, when first bared, proving them to have 
been long protected from littoral tide action by a coating of 
sands. The sand is amassing itself in hummocks above the 
reach of high water. This is no "silting up" of sea 
bottom ; and again I ask those who glibly condemn new 
ideas based on deep researches in Nature, and assert that 
the " land is rising throughout Australasia, and that these 
are common changes, and easily understood,"* Where does 
the water, formerly of noted depths, but now greatly 
shallowed, recede; to and how, and by what natural laws 
does it maintain a spherical outline elsewhere on the globe's 
exterior, if so "easily understood'' ! and not subject to gravi- 
tation to an altering centre of gravity, maintained, and aided 
also, as I submit, by this movement of oceanic volume, 
which researches in nature prove to be accumulating in the 
North Pacific, while diminishing elsewhere throughout the 
world. We may, however, feasibly conclude that the earth's 
centre of gravity is shifting northerly, and that ice accumu- 
lation in Arctic, regions is greatly disproportionate to that of 
the Antarctic, winch wastes by numerous bergs east oft' 
annually, which are more and more frequently met with in 
comparatively low latitudes, and probably by their presence 
within a few hundred 1 miles of the Australian coast, give rise 
to the cloud masses which unseasonably chill our summers, 
and oftimes deluge us with their aqueous contents. The 
central point of arctic cold is ascertained to be consider- 
ably south-west of the astronomically assumed position of 
the arctic pole, and if precipitation and congelation, without 
* Professor McCoy. 
