91 
chloride in abundance. In the table of analyses of Queensland 
waters, the relative proportions of the various salts have not always 
been determined, but it may be seen that in a large number of cases 
the sodium carbonate is the salt most plentifully present, while in 
others sodium chloride predominates. It seems rather probable 
that a careful correlation of all these different analyses according 
to locality and composition taken in conjunction with the geological 
structure at each bore might give useful results in assisting to 
arrive at some conclusion why certain regions have developed 
alkaline rather than saline ground waters. For the purposes of 
the present paper the main point to be emphasised in these analyses 
is the great salinity of the Western Australian ground waters as 
compared with those of Eastern Australia. It is submitted that 
the most feasible explanation of the occurrence of such abnormal 
quantities of common salt is that it is derived from sea water 
within a space of time so recent, geologically speaking, that it has 
been insufficient to allow of the salt being either carried back to 
the sea or concentrated entirely in the low-lying salt lakes. All the 
rain that falls on the surface tends to carry the salt into one or 
other of these final receptacles, and the fact that this action has 
not yet succeeded in removing the salt from the soil to anything 
approaching the extent that must follow from long continued leach- 
ing by rain, may be taken as supporting the view that the present 
condition is of comparatively recent occurrence. This argument, 
however, is weakened by the fact that the capacity for evaporation 
of water in this State very greatly exceeds the precipitation, so that 
it is possible and in many cases probable that very little if any of 
the rain falling on a district goes to increase the body of ground 
water and to help to drive it forward on its slow hut constant 
course seaward. A great deal of it simply sinks into the earlh for 
a time, but is brought up again by capillarity and vegetation and 
evaporated. It is therefore quite possilde that the salinity of the 
soil of such a district might remain practically constant for an 
indefinite period. The most that can be regarded as certain is that 
the salt would tend to become more and more collected in the 
lowest lying portions of each district, and that in course of time 
the slow seaward movement of the ground water must tend to 
restoration of the salt to the ocean. That this result has been at- 
tained in the higher central regions of the State more thoroughly 
than in the southern coastal ones has been already pointed out. 
The dogma that the central portion of this State has been a 
land-surface from time immemorial, which has been re-iterated so 
often as to have become generally accepted belief, seems to the pre- 
sent writer to be founded on no sure basis of facts and to be en- 
tirely o])posed to the physiographical evidence above narrated, 
which all goes to show that the very shape of the landscape as 
we now see it has been mainly impressed upon it by the action of 
bodies of salt water. It is difficult to discover why such a theory 
