11 
In examining the structure of any section of the earth's 
superficies, copious evidences present themselves of the former 
action of large waterflow ; its general course, as denoted by 
diluvium, being nearly north and south, the course of 
existing stream beds being modified by the trend of the 
mountains, and their ravine cleavage. It appeal's that 
immense valleys have been excavated, refilled by sedimen- 
tary deposit, and re-excavated again and again, deep gorges 
eroded, and hillsides torn down, and their strata crumpled 
or subverted. Here, huge masses of granite crop up. There, 
basalt reposes between beds of alluvium, containing organisms 
of recent age, side by side with water-rolled fragments of gold 
and minerals. According to current theories of production 
of such aspects of the earth's crust by a uniformity of almost 
quiescent degeneration during countless myriads of years, 
the geologist, from the limited data open to view, maps out 
the depth, and dip of the disclosed strata, the imaginary 
course of lava streams, and of igneous upheavals of molten 
volumes of primary rocks, on the assumption that only such 
Upheavals can have formed the mountains, or distributed 
masses of granite and some other rocks to the site of their 
present outcropping. Evidences of the abrading action of 
tumultuous volumes of water in eroding the hillsides of vast 
valleys among the mountains, by lines apparently of parallel 
horizontality, termed strife, (though miniatured in every 
feature precisely by the markings on new straight cuts, in 
small stream beds, denuded of protecting sward and vege- 
tation),* are asserted as only explainable as having been 
grooved by ice. Coal deposits are defined as agglomerated 
layers of tropical forest verdure, without due consideration 
of the necessity for some vast fluviatile or other aqueous 
agency, to tear away, drift, and deposit en masse, in natural 
basins, the tree stems and foliage, and overlooking the fact 
that a precise counterpart of such (supposed tropical) foliage 
presents itself in certain submarine forests and sea meadows 
in various parts of the world, and that the assumption that 
accumulations of the latter description of vegetable matter, 
torn from its place of growth, and drifted to its site of 
deposit by the throes of a convulsed ocean, and therein 
subjected to enormous pressure by the superincumbent ocean, 
and deposits therefrom, more feasibly accounts for formation 
of coal. Geologists too often theorize on igneous action as 
one agency of concretion of earths, but the permeating 
element of rock concretion is as yet a problem unsolved. 
Many stratified rocks, composed of minute particles of hard 
* For instance, the Dandenong Creek at the Dandenong Bridge. 
