222 Transactions. 



Canterbury and Westland," pp. 319-22. This is, as far as I have been 

 able to glean, the total reference in published reports to this interesting 

 locality. The present account is necessarily imperfect, but it is based on 

 work done on numerous visits, on two of which I was fortunate in having 

 the advice and assistance of Dr. Marshall, to whom, as well as to Mr. 

 Suter for valuable help in identifying the fossils, my sincere thanks are 

 clue. 



General Description of the Locality. 

 (See map.) 



The district referred to in this account lies, roughly, to the south- 

 east of the point where the railway running north from Christchurch 

 crosses the Waipara River, and for the purposes of more accurate defi- 

 nition the lower gorge of the river may be taken as that part of its 

 course which lies between its junction with the Omilii Creek and the sea. 

 The creek joins the river about two miles below T the railway-crossing, and 

 is historically important, since it flows from the swamp where Haast 

 obtained his Glenmark collection of moa-remains. The actual length of 

 the gorge is about four miles. Its sides are moderately steep, easily 

 climbed in most places, but unscalable in parts, and rising to an average 

 height of about 350 ft. above the river-bed. They are higher on the 

 eastern side, whence they extend as a stretch of irregular downs towards 

 the slopes of Mount Cass, which forms the south-western buttress of the 

 Limestone Range. On the western side of the river the banks are not so 

 high, and they form part of the low downs stretching to the south-west 

 towards Amberley. The breadth of the gorge varies, but it usually pre- 

 sents a wide floor covered with shingle, on which the river wanders. At 

 times, however, its breadth is reduced to about 100 yards, or even less, 

 and then the river-channel is more definitely fixed. In some places the 

 stream forms well-defined loops or meanders — a notable one occurs about 

 half-way through the gorge — and it is now destroying the spurs which 

 project laterally from the high banks into these loops. Although the 

 stream has considerable fall, the large amount of detrital matter which 

 it transports from higher levels, and specially from the banks of loose 

 shingle bordering its course through the Waipara Plains, has so dimin- 

 ished its power of erosion that it has apparently reached a temporary 

 base-level, and this in spite of the fact that within fairly recent times — 

 certainly since the Pleistocene — the coast has experienced a distinct up- 

 ward movement. 



A recent upward movement of the coast-line to the north of the 

 Waipara has been recorded by McKay at Amuri Bluff (Report of the 

 Geological Survey, 1874-76, p. 177), where beaches with Recent shells 

 are found at a height of 500 ft. Evidence of the same movement at the 

 mouth of the Conway and at Motunau is given by Hutton (Report of the 

 Geological Survey, 1873—74, p. 54), where the land has certainly risen 

 150 ft., and, judging from the features of the remarkable plain of marine 

 denudation noted by Hutton and examined more recently by the present 

 author, the elevation has in all probability been much greater. Rem- 

 nants of this plain over a mile in breadth are to be found on both sides 

 of the mouth of the Waipara River. A little way back from the present 

 beach is an old sea-cliff about 50 ft. high extending along the coast for 

 several miles, and from the summit of this the land slopes gently back 

 for about a mile, the upturned edges of the beds forming the solid sub- 

 stratum of the country being planed off neatly by the former action of 

 the sea and then covered with a thin veneer of loose shingle, some of it 



