Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Volume 2 / With Descriptions of the Recently Explored Region of Australia Felix, and of the Present Colony of New South Wales

by T. L. Mitchell

STALAGMITIC CRUST.

Any water charged with carbonate of lime which might have been subsequently introduced would have deposited the calcareous matter in stalactites or stalagmites; but the general absence of these is accounted for in the dryness of the caves. This sedimentary floor contained few or no bones except such as had previously belonged to the breccia, as was evident from the minuter cavities having been still filled with that substance.

I do not pretend to account for the phenomena presented by the caverns, yet it is evident, from the sediments of mud forming the extensive margins of the Darling, that at one period the waters of that spacious basin were of much greater volume than at present, and it is more than probable that the caves of Wellington Valley were twice immersed under temporary inundations. I may therefore be permitted to suggest, from the evidence I am about to detail of changes of level on the coast, that the plains of the interior were formerly arms of the sea; and that inundations of greater height have twice penetrated into, or filled with water, the subterraneous cavities, and probably on their recession from higher parts of the land, parts of the surface have been altered and some additional channels of fluviatile drainage hollowed out. The accumulation of animal remains very much broken and filling up hollow parts of the surface show at least that this surface has been modified since it was first inhabited; and these operations appear to have taken place subsequently to the extinction, in that part of Australia, of the species whose remains are found in the breccia; and previously to the existence, in at least the same districts, of the present species.

STATE OF THE BONES.

No entire skeleton has been discovered, and very rarely were any two bones of the same animal found together. On the contrary even the corresponding fragments of a bone were frequently detected some yards apart (as for instance those in Figures 2 and 1 Plate 49).

PUTREFACTION HAD ONLY COMMENCED WHEN FIRST DEPOSITED.

On the other hand it would appear from the position of the teeth in one skull (Figure 4 Plate 48) that they were only falling out from putrefaction at the time the skull was finally deposited in the breccia, and from the nearly natural position of the smaller bones in the foot of a dasyurus (Figure 2 Plate 51) it can scarcely be doubted that this part of the skeleton was imbedded in the cement when the ligaments still bound the bones together. The united radius and ulna of a kangaroo (Figure 1 Plate 51) are additional evidence of the same kind; and yet if the bones have been so separated and dispersed and broken into minute fragments, as they now appear in this breccia, while they were still bound together by ligaments, it is difficult to imagine how that could take place under any natural process with which we are acquainted.

PLATE 51:
FIGURE 1: FOSSIL REMAINS OF THE RADIUS AND ULNA OF A KANGAROO.
FIGURE 2: OF THE FOOT OF A DASYURUS.
FIGURES 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, AND 11: VARIOUS TEETH OF ANIMALS UNKNOWN.
ALL THESE DRAWINGS BEING OF THE NATURAL SIZE.
FIGURES 12 AND 13, REPRESENT, ON A REDUCED SCALE, THE LARGE BONE WHICH M. CUVIER SUPPOSED TO HAVE BELONGED TO A YOUNG ELEPHANT.