2^,2 Tlie American Geologist. Ai)rii, i899 
ANCIENT GLACIAL ACTION IN AUSTRALASIA. 
By Prof. ("iiAKLKs H. Hitchcock, LL. D., Hanover, N. H. 
A recent trip to Australia and New Zealand has induced me 
to collect the existing evidence relative to the presence of gla- 
ciers in Australasia at the end of the Permian or early in the 
Triassic period. The general conclusion attained is that ice 
action prevailed at about that period in Victoria, New South 
Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, southern India, and South 
Africa, but not in New Zealand. From the study of the fossil 
plants it has been imagined that these same countries had a 
geographical connection in Permian times; and to this hypo- 
thetical continent, which probably included the Antarctic re- 
gions, Suess has given the name of Gondwana Land. If gla- 
ciers existed so widely, it is probable that these lands were 
greatly elevated above the existing conditions, perhaps enough 
to lend some confirmation to this hypothesis of a vast southern 
continent. ]My object now is merely to collate what relates to 
the presence of glaciers thus early in geological time. 
So long ago as 1857, Prof. A. C. Ramsay advocated the ex- 
istence of a Permian glacier in England. I have studied the 
specimens gathered by him in support of this theory, in the 
Museum of the Royal School of Mines, Jermyn street, Lon- 
don, and accept the conclusions suggested. It would be im- 
possible to distinguish the glaciated pebbles and the striation 
from the similar phenomena constantly presented to us in the 
work of the great Pleistocene sheets of ice. 
Quite recently Prof. B. K. Emerson exhibited to the Geo- 
logical Society of America a fine example of a glaciated bould- 
er, perhaps ten inches in length, from a Mesozoic deposit in 
southern India. This I suppose to have come from one of the 
localities described by the government geologists of India ; and 
certainly it gives an air of probability to their suggestions. 
VICTOR!. A. 
My first sight of glacial phenomena in Australia was in 
the Museum of the School of Mines at Bendigo, Victoria. 
Captain Thompson, director of this school, has collected speci- 
mens of glaciated stones from several localities many miles 
apart, and is greatly interested in their study. He almost thinks 
he can make out a moraine from the outcrops near Bendigo, 
