406 • Transactions. 



. . . Subsidence seems to have commenced first in the southern portion 

 of the North Island. ... At a later date sinking began in the South 

 Island also. . . . This sinking has again been followed by an elevation 

 of all parts of New Zealand, the centre of the North Island rising as a large 

 flat dome, on the summit of which stand Ruapehu and Tongariro ; while 

 the South Island has also been elevated several hundred feet. And this 

 elevation appears to be still going on." 



Hutton excluded the Greta beds from his Wanganui series, and thus 

 did not recognize one of the factors distinguishing the North Canterbury 

 from the South Canterbury and North Otago diastrophic province. The 

 explanation his classification gives for the other differences between the 

 two provinces depends on extensive folding between the periods of deposition 

 of the Waipara system and the Oamaru series. 



Speight and Wild (1918) have amply demonstrated that there was no 

 extensive folding between the deposition of the Amuri limestone and the 

 Weka Pass stone, and the palaeontological evidence shows that the gap 

 between, the two rocks is not nearly so extensive as Hutton supposed. Park 

 (1905) claimed that the Pareora series was an integral part of the Oamaru 

 series, and Uttley and Thomson (1914) and Gudex (1918) have demonstrated 

 that it forms the upper part ; Hutton's slight upheaval between the two 

 series (Oamaru and Pareora) was postulated' owing to a misreadmg of the 

 stratigraphy of the Waihao district, and has no existence in the sense- in 

 which he claimed it, though there is probably a disconformity below not 

 the Awamoan but the Hutchinsonian. 



The great flaw in Hutton's scheme of classification was, however, his 

 failure to recognize the magnitude of the post-Wanganui movements, the 

 Kaikoura orogenic movements, the demonstration of which we owe to 

 Cotton (1916). Owing to his exclusion of the Greta and Awatere beds 

 from his Wanganui series and their correlation in his Paeroa series, Hutton 

 postulated a great upheaval after the latter, followed by a glacial epoch, 

 and a subsidence during which the Wanganui beds were deposited. With 

 a later elevation. We now laiow that the great upheaval culminated 

 after the deposition of the Wanganui beds, and that to it are due many 

 of the effects which Hutton referred to the post-Hokonui folding. Hutton, 

 therefore, failed to recognize the necessity of grouping his Waipara and 

 Cainozoic systems into one grand one, sharply distinct from all others in 

 New Zealand, and, while there are great elements of value in his classification 

 and correlations, his scheme must be profoundly modified. 



Park (1905) corrected two errors in Hutton's work — v^z., the un- 

 necessary separation of the Pareora and Oamaru series, and the mistaken 

 correlation of the Greta and Awatere beds in the Pareora series ; but he 

 retained the major faults of Hutton's scheme — viz., the erroneous con- 

 clusion as to extensive folding between the Waipara and Oamaru systems, 

 and the failure to recognize the bearing of the Kaikoura orogenic movements. 

 Morgan (1916c) proposed a general classification of the younger rocks 

 as follows : — ' • 



Pliocene. 



Local imconformities. 



Upper Miocene. 



Probable local unconformities. 



Middle and Lower Miocene. 



Unconformity. 



Eocene. 



Unconformity (?). 



Cretaceous (with possibly some early Tertiary strata). 



