454 Transaction*. — Geology. 



Evidence of this kind is considered to be conclusive of the 

 former presence of glaciers in a district or country. The 

 whole of such evidence may not be available, but this would 

 not lessen the value of the facts in cases where it is satisfac- 

 torily established that moraines have existed, as moraines are 

 the special products of glaciers. 



The greater part of what was formerly the Provincial Dis- 

 trict of Hawke's Bay is connected with what is essentially an 

 area of shingle deposition. The distribution of shingle and 

 other allied deposits, including sands, pumice, clays, lignite, 

 and a conglomerate, extends to the southward, and is equally 

 diffused on the western slopes of the Euahine Eange. This 

 shingle deposit is to be found even more widely diffused along 

 the eastern side of the South Island, and there are many im- 

 portant reasons for supposing that in the earlier part of the 

 Pleistocene period the area now known as Cook Strait was 

 a land-area. On both sides of the strait the valleys are made 

 up of Pleistocene deposits of shingle, and they almost suggest 

 the possibility of all the valleys along the east side of both 

 Islands having been at some portion of the period connected 

 with an immersed area farther to the eastward of the present 

 coast-line, the entire drainage from the watershed trending to 

 the south-east. 



We have seen that it has been stated by the late Sir Julius 

 von Haast that the Canterbury Plains "have been formed in 

 their upper portion by morainic and in their middle and lower 

 by fluviatile accumulations." Whether the same thing has 

 taken place in connection with the shingle deposits of this 

 district is a question which is yet unsettled. Before proceed- 

 ing to discuss the merits of the evidence available in favour of 

 a Glacial period in the North Island it may be well to give a 

 brief survey of the distribution of shingle and cognate deposits 

 in the district more immediately connected with the water 

 system of Hawke's Bay. This is the more necessary because 

 at the present time there are two separate and distinct shingle- 

 aveas in the district, the one being the areas known as the 

 Ahuriri and Euataniwha Plains, the other certain areas which 

 will be now described. The former areas are situated between 

 the latter, and, in fact, they overlie some of the latter deposits 

 which remained after a period of submergence that took place 

 between the close of the one formation and the opening of the 

 more recent one. The coast-line of Hawke's Bay, extending 

 from Cape Kidnappers in the south to Te Mahia in the north, 

 consists mainly of high cliffs, rising in places more than 400ft. 

 above the sea. The only low coast is that which bounds the 

 Ahuriri Plain, and extends from Tangoio to near the Kid- 

 nappers. At the mouth of the Wairoa Eiver the cliffs are 

 somewhat lower than to the immediate north or south ; and 



