288 Transactions. 



falls on vegetation its migration is stopped." Quite as we should therefore 

 expect, we find in one case nearly 5 per cent., iu another nearly 12 per 

 cent., of organic matter in the analj^ses cited above from Merrill. But the 

 Timaru deposit contains merely a trace. Hardcastle attempts to explain 

 this remarkable fact by assuming that " the growth of the deposit was so 

 slow as to nearly allow the rootlets of each generation of plants to suck 

 up the last remnants of the decay of previous ones.'' But any one who 

 understands what goes on in a soil clothed with vegetation knows that 

 this cannot take place. An article by Sir A. D. Hall in the Journ. Agric. 

 Science, vol. 1, p. 241, 1905, may be consulted in this connection. 



Speight {loc. cit.) has- written, " The general absence of marine fossils, 

 the presence of remains of Dinornis and other land-birds, as well as its 

 peculiar distribution, is against a marine origin being assigned to it." 

 As regards marine fossils, setting aside the fact of those recorded by 

 Hutton {loc. cit.), which cannot be ex2:)lained on the aeolian hypothesis, we 

 must surely allow Hutton's contention that negative evidence on such a 

 question is of little weight. There are other cases of undoubted marine 

 deposits which are marked by a poverty of marine fossils. The greywacke 

 is one such ; the BuUer series of sandstones and conglomerates is another. 

 The Amuri limestone and the Weka Pass stone are also poor in the larger 

 forms that we might reasonably expect. 



The presence of remains of Dinornis and other land-birds nmst be 

 interpreted rather as evidence in favour of marine origin than the reverse, 

 the bones having been washed down and covered in the silt by local stream- 

 action. It is obvious that birds require vegetation for their sustenance, 

 and moas could scarcely have lived on Banks Peninsula at a time when 

 loess was supposed to be forming, when it is considered that there is proof 

 that no vegetation was present on the part covered by the deposit — at 

 least there is no trace of it left. It may be noticed, in passiug, that the 

 advocates of the aeolian hypothesis call in local stream-action to account 

 for the cases of distinct stratification noticed by Hutton* at Lyttelton 

 and elsewhere, but are unwilling to allow the same agency to account for 

 the covering of the moa-bones. 



As regards the peculiar distribution of the deposit, that also is, I think, 

 rather evidence in favour of its marine origin. Its occurrence within the 

 Lyttelton caldera is as reasonably explained by deposition from water 

 as by sui^posing, as is necessary to the aeolian hj'pothesis, that while it 

 was deposited on the lower portions of the outer slopes it was also carried 

 over the intervening ridges into the Lyttelton caldera without leaving a 

 trace of its path. 



* F. W. HuTTOJf, Trans. X.Z. Inst., vol. 15, p. 411, 1883. 



