Volume 14 Australasia - dana ward's homepage

THE AUSTRALIAN ALPS. 859which lie west of the farthest sources of the Murraj-, a frontal moraine clams up alittle fluvial valley at an elevation of 2,950 feet.In the Australian Alps the prevailing formations are ofgreat age, consistingof granites and Silurian masses interspersed with porphyries, diorites, and basalts.Here and there tertiary rocks overlie the valleys, but are always disposed horizontally,whereas the surrounding strata have been diversely folded and dislocated.Fig.1.55.—AusTEAiiAN Alps.Scale 1 : o,25u,000.East oF GreenwichDepths,Notwithstanding the intervening depressions the same general features reappearfarther west in the Yictoria highlands, and even in Tasmania, which belongs ingreat measure to the same geological epoch. The Pyrenees, which, run parallelwith the coast north-west of Melbourne, and the Grampians, whose irregular formsstretch farther west, are also of Silurian formation, though less elevated than theAlps, ilouut "\niliam, the culminating point in the Grampians, being scarcely5,6.00 feet high.But nowhere in Australia have igneous formations been more developed than