RELICS OF THE PERMO-CARBONIFEROUS ICE AGE 
13 
Considerable attention has recently been and is now- 
being given to the Antarctic region, and its varied glacial 
phenomena, hence it seemed to me that, as a portion of 
Western Australia has been subject to all the rigours of an 
Aictic climate during one period of its geological history, a 
brief account thereof might perhaps be appropriate at the 
present time. I, therefore, purpose directing your attention 
for an academic hour to an account of the relics of the 
Permo-Carboniferous Ice Age occurring in W estern Australia. 
The bulk of the rocks of Western Australia have, 
up to the present, derived their importance from their real 
01 potential economic value, whilst the Permo-Carboniferous 
glacial deposits owe their chief importance to purely scientific 
considerations, though they do mark very important 
geological horizons bidding fair to make them valuable 
bench marks, which mateiially assist in the development 
of the resources of those widespread districts in which the 
deposits occur. 
Discovery of the Glacial Conglomerates and 
their Recent Studies. 
In the year 1897 I made a traverse up the Murchison 
Valley in an exceptionally dry season, when considerations 
of grass and water very seriously interfered with geological 
investigations. At a point in the river near the Fourteen 
Mile Crossing, a bed of conglomerate, dipping at a low 
angle to the east, was exposed — a peculiar feature, which 
immediately attracted my attention was that many of the 
component pebbles were found to be covered with scratches 
of such a nature as to suggest that they owed their origin 
to ice-action. A few yards lower down were beds of cross- 
bedded sandstone and fine conglomerate dipping east at 
an angle of about 20 degrees. One of the beds had been 
scored to such a degree as to produce surfaces as smooth 
and polished as plate glass, though they did not present 
the clearest evidence of ice-action, it is quite possible that 
this may be a glaciated pavement. 
Some distance up the Murchison River, near the 
Forty-mile Crossing and Water Reserve 1005, the strata 
consist of sedimentary beds, interstratified with coarse 
conglomeiates or boulder beds ; though such a careful 
search as circumstances permitted was made, no undoubted 
ice-scratched or striated-boulders were detected in this 
locality. The impoitant point in connection with these 
conglomerates containing the scratched boulders and the 
striated rock surface, is that they foirn the southern ex- 
tension of the Permo-Carboniferous Series of the Gascoyne, 
