Hill. — On the District beiiueen Napier and Puketitiri. 185 



At the top of the hills on the Napier-Kuripapango Eoad, 

 known as " Blowhard," the sandstones run into a peculiar 

 fluted liniestone, as described by me in a former paper. 

 Further northward the limestone disappears, except here and 

 there, and a brownish-grey hungry sandstone, mixed in places 

 with a grit conglomerate, takes its place. This sandstone 

 country has been subject to great denudation, and the whole 

 of the Puketitiri district presents remnants of this sandstone 

 and nodular limestone, into which the former passes as it dips 

 to the south-east. 



In order, however, to comprehend the full sequence of 

 rocks in the district under notice it is necessary to imagine 

 what the country was at the time when the drainage was to 

 the south-west. The slope was towards Hawke's Bay, but a 

 deep valley lay between the rising mountains and the range 

 of limestones, whose scarp showed a fracture running north- 

 east and south-west, and facing the north-west. This deep 

 valley can be traced for many miles, for the scarp is as 

 definite to-day as when the upward pressure fractured the 

 limestones which at that time covered the entire area in the 

 direction of Euapehu. I took a photograph of one section of 

 the scarp, on the ridge between Puketitn-i and Hawkeston, the 

 residence of Mr. J. Hallett, which shows a face as if cut with 

 a knife. The elevation of the Kawekas and the fracturing of 

 the rocks to the eastward caused a break sufficiently large for 

 the entrance of the sea so as to form deep bays and inlets, 

 and in various parts of the district fossiliferous sands and im- 

 pure limestones are met with topping limestones which belong 

 to the Upper Miocene beds. I do not think these younger beds 

 of fossiliferous sands and limestones are to be met with to the 

 north of the 39th parallel of latitude, which may be said to be 

 the northern boundary of Hawke's Bay ; but it is also a 

 curious fact that shingle conglomerates and attendant sands 

 do not appear to the northward of this parallel, whilst they 

 are very highly developed to the southward. The limestones 

 which present in their scarps such a characteristic feature 

 in the landscape belong to the Upper Miocene beds. They 

 abound in fossils, and in some places the large oyster 

 Ostrea ingens, which is characteristic of what are known as 

 the Te Ante limestones, forms immense banks, presenting the 

 appearance of artificial banks of oyster-shells. On the hills a 

 mile or so to the north of Mr. Hallett's homestead there are 

 scores of acres of these shells, and they are arranged so 

 regularly atop of each other that it is difficult to imagine how 

 they lived. "^^ Certainly they represent a long period of de- 



* How they managed to obtain food crowded so thickly together as 

 they were one above the other is a mystery, but the fact remains that the 

 oysters, of immense size, shell upon shell, existed by the million. 



