404 Transactions. 



of which is at least Middle Eocene, and separated by an unconformity 

 from the underlying beds. To distinguish this latter the term ' Cretaceo- 

 Tertiary ' has been made use of, as it is believed that the series bridges 

 over the gap which separates the Lower Eocene from the Cretaceous rocks 

 of Europe." (Hector, 1882, pp.'xxii-xxiii.) i 



Park (1888a) in commenting on the stratigraphical and palaeontological 

 difficulties in the correlation of two distinct groups of beds, " the one 

 characterized by a fauna and flora with ' a distinctly Tertiary facies, the 

 other by forms of an equally pronounced Secondary type," put forward 

 another argument as accepted by the supporters of the correlation, although 

 Hector himself does not seem to have used it in his writings : " The rela- 

 tion existing between these two groups has not been very satisfactorily 

 ■^ determined, but they are at present supposed by the Survey to be in a 

 manner horizontal equivalents- — that is, the result of contemporaneous 

 deposition, the Tertiary strata being taken to represent the shallow- water, 

 and the Secondary strata the deep-water, conditions of the same period." 



It appears probable also that the fossils of the Selwyn Rapids beds in 

 the Malvern Hills greatly strengthened McKay and Hector in their belief 

 in the correctness of the correlation of the " saurian beds " and Waipara 

 greensands with the greensands underlying the Ototara limestone in South 

 Canterbury and Otago. The Selwyn Rapids beds lie a little distance above 

 an Ostrea bed extremely similar to that in the Waipara district, and the 

 nature of the rocks is similar to that of the "saurian beds." No one has 

 ever questioned that the Selwyn Rapids beds belong to a horizon below the 

 Amuri limestone. .The majority of the fossil Pelecypoda, however, belong 

 to or closely resemble genera which are common in the Tertiary, and 

 von Haast originally believed the fauna to be a Tertiary one. As these 

 beds lie geographically between the North and South Canterbury localities, 

 they seemed to offer themselves as a stepping-stone in correlation. The 

 Cretaceo-Tertiary formation was supposed for some geographical reason to 

 contain fewer distinctively Cretaceous forms as it was traced south. 



The flaw in* Hector's argument, by which it falls to the ground, is the 

 incorrectness of his premise that the great mass of the molluscan famia 

 associated with the saurians in northern Canterbury agrees with that of 

 the coal rocks in other parts of New Zealand. Woods's examination of 

 the Pelecypod fauna associated with the saurians failed to bring to light 

 a single species known from the rocks of the Oamaru and South Canterbury 

 or the West Coast coalfields, and there is little reason to suppose that the 

 case will be any better when the gasteropods are described. * 



Hutton (1885 b, c) perceived clearly the flaws in Hector's arguments, 

 but his criticisms were weakened by two circumstances. The first was that 

 the Upper Cretaceous faunas were not described, and the only satisfactory 

 collections were those of the Geological Survey, which were inaccessible to 

 him. The second was his own mistake in regard to the Pareora system. 

 In this he included the Awamoan beds and all the Otago and South Canter- 

 bury localities now correlated in the Awamoan ; but he also included in it 

 the Waiareka greensands, the Enfield beds, and the Hampden beds, which 

 are clearly below the Ototara limestone. He pointed out the distinctively 

 Tertiary facies of the faimas of these beds, as opposed to the Cretaceous 

 facies of the beds below the Amuri limestone ; but in claiming that these 

 beds lay above the Ototara limestone he gave McKay (1887b) a handle 

 for upsetting a part of his criticism, although a part that was not really 

 essential to the problem. Consequently Hutton's criticism of the corre- 

 lations assumed by the Cretaceo-Tertiary theory failed to carry conviction 

 to Hector and McKay, or to gain general acceptance. 



