Haast. — On the Sedimentary Rocks of Canterbury. 449 



Art. LVIII. — Notes on the Age and Subdivisions of the Sedimentary 

 Racks in the Canterbury Mountains, based upon the Palcponto- 

 logical Researches of Professor Dr. C. Baron von Ettinyshamen 

 in Gratz (Austria). 



By Sir Julius von Haast, K.C.M.G., D.Sc, Ph.D., F.E.S., etc. 



[Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 27id September, 1886.] 



For many years past a great diversity of opinion has prevailed 

 concerning the age and relative position of the Mount Potts beds 

 in the Rangitata Eiver, containing only fossil shells and saurian 

 remains in one, and some plant remains in another, locality, not 

 far distant from each other ; and the Clent Hill beds in the Upper 

 Ashburton District, in which only fossil plant remains have 

 hitherto been found. 



Whilst Professor McCoy, in Melbourne, as far as 23 years 

 ago, assigned the Mount Potts beds to the Lower Carboniferous 

 or Upper Devonian, and the fossil plants of the Clent Hills to 

 Jurassic times, I always maintained, based upon the strati- 

 graphical relations of those two groups of beds to each other, 

 that they were of the same age, having shown at the same time, 

 and as I hope conclusively, that both occur near the base of the 

 whole series. Since then, the Geological Survey of New Zealand 

 has repeatedly examined these localities, the result being that 

 the shell-beds were first called Liassic, then Triassic, and now 

 Permian ; and the plant-beds in the Clent Hills, Jurassic, with 

 which those of the Malvern Hills and some other localities were 

 associated. 



The principal point of difference between Professor McCoy 

 and myself on the one hand, and the Geological Survey of New 

 Zealand on the other, was not the real age of the Mount Potts 

 and Clent Hills beds, but the great difference of age assigned 

 to them. 



In a paper on the " Geological Structure of the Southern 

 Alps of New Zealand,"* I once more reiterated my views on the 

 subject ; and my researches for the last twenty years have amply 

 confirmed this. Dr. Hector, however, has continued to defend 

 his own views, of which his attempted refutation of my paper 

 in the same volumef is a proof. 



For many years past, together with other New Zealand 

 geologists, I have waited in vain for a reliable description of our 

 fossil plants by a competent palaeontologist, so that the data 

 upon which the different views were based could be verified. I 



* " Trans. N.Z. Inst.," vol. xvii., p. 322. 



t " Notes on the Geological Structure of the Canterbury Mountains," 

 etc., I.e., p. 337. 



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