4 
are covered with snow during nine months in the year ; 
their tributaries are perennial streams, flowing over beds 
of pebbles, boulders, and bars of hard rock, resembling 
the trout streams of Scotland. Owing to the direction 
of the great valleys being at right-angles to the coast-line, 
the climate, even on the sea-coast, is generally cool and 
agreeable ; and the moisture-laden winds, which have 
uninterrupted course along the valleys, are cast upwards 
into colder air when they encounter the Dividing Range, 
and there precipitation is constant. Even in the height 
of summer, snow lies for weeks in the deep recesses of 
the mountains, and when it is melted the bright-green of 
the sub-alpine flora marks the sites it has occupied. 
Chains of hills and spurs, offshoots of the great range, 
border the valleys, the culminating points of some of 
which attain a height of 5300 feet. The highest indi¬ 
cates, however, only the altitude of the great plain, for 
the most part covered with newer volcanic rocks overlying 
tertiary gravels, which once extended from Mount Useful 
on the west to the Snowy River on the east. The rivers 
fed by the snow and the rains have broken up this once 
great plateau ; they have cut deeply into the hard rocks ; 
they have carried downwards towards and into the sea 
vast quantities of sand, mud, and slime, and the evi¬ 
dences of their work are found in the low level tracts 
of tertiary sands and clays which extend from the Moe 
Swamp on the west to Ram Head on the east. Work 
similar to that which they have done can be seen in any 
wayside torrent. But because of the grandeur of the 
sculpture in the mountain ranges, the mind is slow to 
recognise them as the agents. The mind, untaught by 
experience, would seek rather in unknown plutonic forces 
the agents which reared the lofty peaks and ranges that 
