844 Transactions. — Geoloriy. 



flanks— and the strong sulphurous stream flowing irom the 

 former, all show that the subterranean forces are still powerful. 

 One of its craters contains a most beautiful and instructive 

 example of a lava stream, which has flowed from the crater wall 

 across the floor, spreading out in fan-shaped form, and having 

 such a look of freshness about it that it is difiicult to believe it 

 is not still flowing. 



A few miles to the north we find, at the southern end of Lake 

 Taupo, a large number of hot and boiling springs, geysers, 

 solfataras, and mud volcanoes, all in a very active state ; whilst 

 close by are the innumerable fumaroles of Waihi, and, but 

 a short distance away, the group of hot springs recently 

 reported by Mr. Laurence Cussen, which are quite new to 

 Europeans. These are situated in a recess in the Kakaramea 

 Mountain. 



Stretching along a narrow belt of country from the north 

 end of Taupo, still in the north-east direction, we find the vast 

 number of hot springs, fumaroles, and geysers of Tapuaeharuru, 

 Wairakei, Ohani, and Orakeikorako, with the extinct volcano 

 of Tauhara, on which is an old crater, now almost hidden by a 

 growth of tall forest trees. Orakeikorako, on the Waikato 

 Eiver, a place seldom visited by travellers, has a very large 

 number of hot springs, some of which are forming terraces, but 

 greatly inferior in their present aspect to those of Eotomahana. 

 A little further in the same line northwards rises the Paeroa 

 Eange, the wall-like western face of which is covered at its base 

 with boiling springs and mud volcanoes, which in one part 

 (Kopiha) occupy the face of the hill from top to bottom, and the 

 steam from which appears to have boiled the solid rock materials 

 into a mass of clay of various colours. It is this part that 

 Hochstetter refers to in his work, where he points out the 

 possibility of the clays becoming so loosened, by the thermal 

 action, that the whole hillside may some time collapse and 

 deluge the Eatoreka Plain below. 



On the northern slope of Paeroa are more hot springs, and 

 then rises the mountain Maungaongaonga, evidently an old 

 volcanic hill, though the crater is almost lost to view ; and 

 immediately to the east of it is Kakaramea, or Maunga- 

 kakaramea, of which we have heard so much lately. It is an 

 isolated conical hill, of considerable height, whose sides are 

 seamed by gorges, the sites of former hot springs, and on the 

 surface of which steam still escapes in a number of places, the 

 ground occasionally being so hot as to bo unpleasant to walk 

 over. On its soutliern base, and extending thence to the head 

 of tlie Waiotapu Eiver — an affluent of the Waikato — are found a 

 large nuinbcr of hot springs, fumaroles, and mud volcanoes, 

 with some terraces in course of formation, but which, however, 

 cannot be at all compared to Rotumahana for beauty. Two 



