Hutton. — The Wanganui System. 837 



the same year, Dr. Hector, in his new classification of formations, 

 considered the upper beds at Wanganui to be pliocene ; and he 

 grouped them with the Hawke's Bay beds as the Kereru Eotella 

 beds, subsequently called the Kereru series. 1 The blue clay of 

 Shakespeare Cliff was now called the Wanganui series, and put 

 into the upper miocene. Indeed, the Director of the Geological 

 Survey has never acquiesced in my view that the Shakespeare 

 Cliff clay is younger than the miocene. He has always con- 

 sidered it as upper miocene, placing it formerly with the Awatere 

 series, but last year with the Te Aute limestone ; the Awatere 

 series being now made lower miocene. 2 It will thus be seen 

 that the terms "Wanganui formation" or "Wanganui series" have 

 been used sometimes for the upper sandy beds, sometimes for 

 the underlying blue clay. 



In January, 1884, I examined the Wanganui District, and 

 came to the conclusion that the upper sandy beds cannot be 

 separated from the blue clay ; that all are of pliocene age, and 

 very different, pakeontologically, from the Awatere series or the 

 Te Aute limestone. Accordingly, in a paper read to the Geolo- 

 gical Society of London, in January, 1885, 1 proposed a Wanganui 

 system to include both ; distinguishing the beds at Wanganui 

 as the Putiki series, those at Hawke's Bay as the Petane series, 

 and those on the west side of the Kuataniwha Plains, in Waipawa 

 County, as the Kereru series ; 8 at the same time saying that 

 these series were geographical only, aud did not represent 

 different epochs of time. I had not room in that paper to give 

 all the evidence on which I relied for proving that these series 

 formed a distinct system well marked off, both palseontologically 

 and stratigraphically, from" the older Pareora system ; and the 

 object of the present communication is to furnish this, together 

 with other evidence, which I obtained during a visit to Hawke's 

 Bay last January. However, in order to save space, I have not 

 thought it necessary to give separate lists of the fossils from 

 each locality, but have contented myself with one list of all the 

 species known from the Wanganui system, with the localities in 

 which each has been found. Kereru I have not visited, and 

 have no list of fossils from there ; but, according to Mr. McKay, 

 they are the same as those found at Matapiro Station, on the 

 Ngaruroro Biver. Of course my visits, both to Wanganui and 

 to Hawke's Bay, were far too short to allow me to work out the 

 stratigraphical relations of all the different beds ; but I think 

 that what I have seen, together with the large collections of 

 fossils that I have examined, will be sufficient to lay the foun- 

 dation for a correct classification of the beds, and will enabl 

 local geologists to work out the details. 



1 " Eep. Geol. Exp.," 1876-77, p. 4. ^O' 0° S / 



2 " Rep. Geol. Expl.," 1883, p. 13. 



3 " Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc," vol. xli., p. 211. 



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