PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS — SECTION C. 
71 
Gympie Gold Field in Queensland. The boulders range from 6 inches 
to 1 foot in diameter ; are rounded and imbedded in clay shales — [of 
Carboniferous age — T. W.E.D.]. 
In the same publication, p. 213, Mr. H. Y. L. Brown suggests the 
probability of floating ice haying played some part in the distribution 
of fragments of the Upper Cretaceous rocks forming the stony downs 
of the Mesozoic plains of South Australia. 
In his elaborate work on the Geology of Tasmania, published in 
1888, # Mr. 11. M. Johnston enlarged upon and reviewed the evidences 
of glaciation in Australia and Tasmania. 
He ascribes lack of evidence of a severe glacial period in the 
Pleistocene rocks of Australia and Tasmania to the absence of such 
geographical conditions as would bar the intrusion of warm equatorial 
currents at the last period of maximum eccentricity, combined with 
winter in aphelion. 
In 1890 Dr. Feistmantel’s work was published on “ The Geological 
and Paleontological relations of the Coal and Plant-bearing Beds of 
Palaeozoic and Mesozoic Age in Eastern Australia and Tasmania.” 
Basing liis arguments partly on the evidence of the fossil plants, partly 
on that of the glacial beds, Dr. Feistmantol correlates the Bacchus 
Marsh beds of Victoria and Upper and Lower Marine beds of New 
South Wales with the Dwyka conglomerates of South Africa and the 
Talchir boulder beds of India, the P roductus limestone of the Salt 
Kange in India, which overlies the Talchir boulder beds, proving the 
late Paleozoic Age of the Talehirs, and suggesting the correlation not 
only of the Talehirs but of the Produetus limestone in Afghanistan 
also with the Permo-Carboniferous system of New South Wales. 
He states (op. cit ., p. 1 81) — “The most important phenomenon 
within these various deposits is the conglomerates or boulder beds, 
about the origin of which there is now the general opinion that they 
have been deposited through the action of ice in one form or other, 
the manner of deposition being such as to force upon one this kind 
of explanation ; and besides this there have been found polished and 
ice-scratched pebbles and boulders within these beds. This circum- 
stance would, of course, indicate a rather general change of climatic 
conditions over Australia, portions of Africa, India, Ac., towards the 
close of the Carboniferous epoch. But I do not think it was contem- 
poraneous over that whole region, and it appears to me that it set in 
first in Eastern Australia (New South Wales), destroying the Car- 
boniferous flora at an early date, while in Southern Africa we find 
still a Carboniferous or coal measures flora of a higher stage, and only 
hereafter change of climate appears to have taken place there. 
When the conditions of ice-action ceased, there appeared in Africa, 
India, Victoria, New South Wales, &c., a luxuriant flora of jl peculiar 
type, which was, however, foreshadowed by a fevv forms in the Dower 
Coal Measures iu New South AVales. In this period falls the deposition 
of the Karoo formation in Africa, the Gondwana system in India, 
Newcastle beds, &c., in New South Wales, Bacchus Marsh beds in 
Victoria, and so on.” 
In 1890 Mr. E. J. Dunn, E.G.S., published a paper on the 
glacial conglomerates of Victoria.! 
* Geology of Tasmania, pp. 254-257 and 296-297. 
+ Report second meeting Austr. Ass. Avt. Sci., pp. 4o2-456, Melbourne, 18 JO. 
