76 
president’s ADDRESS — SECTION C. 
Por the above it is necessary to suppose that the ice-front entered the 
Sea*” Eeference will be made to this ingenious theory of Mr. Brittle- 
bank further on. 
In 1893 Captain F. W. Hutton contributed an able and detailed 
report, as member of the Research Committee appointed to collect 
evidence as to glacial action in Australasia in Tertiary or Post-Tertiary 
time, on the ancient glaciers of Hew Zealand.* 
He shows on his map that daring the great Glacier Period of 
Hew Zealand, which dated, he considers, as stated elsewhere, as far back 
as perhaps early Pliocene time, the area occupied by glacier ice and 
suowfields was at least (according to my approximate estimates from 
his map) twenty times as much as the area at present covered by snow 
and glaciers. The Wakatipu glacier attained a length of eighty miles 
during the Glacier Period, whereas the largest modern glacier in New 
Zealand — the Tasman — is only eighteen miles in length. The ancient 
glaciers on the west coast of the South Island descended below the 
present [the italics are mine] sea-level, but there is no evidence that 
they ever reached the sea, an argument obviously in favour of the land 
having stood higher than it does now, at the time when the glaciers 
attained their maximum development. Captain Hutton concludes (op. 
cit ., p. 240) — “The biological evidence is therefore to the effect that 
the ocean round New Zealand has not been much colder than at 
present ever since the Miocene Period.” 
A short summary of evidences of glacial action in Australia and 
Tasmania in Tertiary or Post-Tertiary time is furnished by myself in 
the same volume (op. cit., pp. 229-232). 
In 1894 Mr. Richard If elms communicated a paper to the Linnean 
Society of New South W ales on the recently observed evidences of an 
extensive glacier action at Mount Kosciusko plateau. t 
He claims to have discovered traces of terminal moraines, and 
states (op. cit., p. 353) — “ All the moraines observed by me end 
towards the east or south-east ; at any rate, it is plainly demonstrable 
that the ice moved from a westerly direction.” At Lake Merewether 
he discovered a distinct moraine dam (op. cit., p. 357) resembling an 
artificially heaped up railway embankment, about 100 feet above the 
valley. He discovered that much of the snow was rendered pink by 
an alga perhaps allied to Protococcus nivalis (op. cit., p. 361). “These 
algae live most luxuriantly and very abundantly a few inches below the 
surface, and when the dirty granulated crust of the snow is removed 
to the depth of an inch or two the sight is surprising and pleasing. The 
disclosed part reveals a beautifully fresh crimson colouring speckled 
with pure white snow granules, that resembles the hue of a freshly-cut 
ripe watermelon.” At Boggy Plain the altitude of the morainic 
material is said to be as low as 5,200 feet. Mr. Helms exhibited a 
beautifully striated rock Fragment about 10 inches in diameter, 
obtained by him from the Kosciusko plateau. 
In November, 1894, Mr. T. S. Hall contributed a note on the biblio- 
graphy of the Bacchus Marsh G lacial Deposits, J in which he emphasises 
the fact that Daintree found striated boulders at Bacchus Marsh in 1866. 
* Rep, Riftli Meeting Austr. Assoc. Adv. Sci. Adelaide, 1803, pp. 232-240, with 
one plate. 
t Proc. Linn. Soc. N.S.W., second series, vol. iii. , pt. 3, pp. 349-364, with 
plate xviii., 1894. 
+ The Victorian Naturalist, Melbourne, 1894, pp. 125*128. 
