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president’s ADDRESS — SECTION C. 
this part of the subject. I should like, however, to quote from an 
earlier publication of that accomplished glacialist, as it seems to me 
that what he says has happened in the evolution of scientific thought 
on the subject of the glaciations of Europe and America may come 
to pass in our time in Australasia. 
Professor James Geikie, in his address to the Geological Section 
of the British Association, at Birmingham, 12th Sept., 1889, # stated 
that — 
“ At first icebergs are appealed to as explaining everything. Next 
we meet with sundry ingenious attempts at a compromise between 
floating ice and a continuous ice-sheet. As observations multiply, 
however, the element of floating ice is gradually eliminated, and all 
the phenomena are explained by means of land ice and ‘ schmelz- 
wasser * alone.” 
Speaking of the evidences of glaciation in Germany, he says (op. 
cit ., p. 461) — “ Nowhere do German geologists find any evidence of 
marine action. On the contrary, the dovetailing and interosculation 
of boulder-clay with aqueous deposits are explained by the relation of 
the ice to the surface over which it flowed. Throughout the peri- 
pheral area it did not rest so continuously upon the ground as was the 
case in the inner region of glacial erosion. In many places it was 
tunnelled by rapid streams and rivers, and here and there it arched 
over sub-glacial lakes, so that accumulation of ground moraine 
proceeded side by side with the formation of aqueous sediments.” 
With regard to the absence, as far as vet known, of a distinct 
terminal moraine in Victoria, Professor Geikie’s statement with regard 
to the Pleistocene glaciation of Germany might also apply to that of 
Victoria in Permo-Carboniferous times. His words are (op. cit., p. 
465) — “When the inland ice flowed south to the Hartzaud the hills of 
Saxony, it formed no great terminal moraines. Doubtless, many 
erratics and much rock-rubbish were showered upon the surface of the 
ice from the higher mountains of Scandinavia, but owing to fanning 
out of the ice on its southward march such superficial debris was 
necessarily spread over a constantly widening area. It may well be 
doubted, therefore, whether it even reached the terminal front of the 
ice-sheet in sufficient bulk to form conspicuous moraines. It seems 
most probable that the terminal moraines of the great inland ice would 
consist of low banks of boulder-clay and aqueous materials — the 
latter, perhaps, strongly predominating, and containing here and 
there larger and smaller angular erratics which had travelled on the 
surface of the ice.” 
The occurrence of the erratics in the marine Permo-Carboniferous 
strata must of course in any case be referred to the action of 
floating ice. The following is an account of how such erratics were 
dropped into marine clays in Post-Tertiary geological time: — 
Professor Stone f states that — 
“The clays and sands that were formed off the shore of the sea in 
Maine during the 4 Champlain 9 elevation of the sea are strewn with 
erratic boulders up to 20 feet in diameter. The clays are fossiliferous 
and must have been formed in the open sea. The boulders were dropped 
* Geol. Mag., new series, Dec., iii., vol 6, 1889, p. 461. 
t Geol. Mag., new series, Dec., iii., vol. 6., 1889, p. 425. 
