Thomson. — Diastrophic Correlation and Districts in the Notocene. 409 



more nearly ; but this name was descriptive and not derived from a locality, 

 being founded on ngarara, Maori for a reptile. 



As trie term " Amuri " is indissolubly connected with the Amuri lime- 

 stone, which must be excluded from the group for which a name is 

 sought, it cannot be used, and a new name becomes necessary. The most 

 appropriate appears to be Piripauan, derived from Piripaua, the Maori 

 name for Amuri Bluff. The disadvantage of this introduction of an entirely 

 new name is compensated by the greater definiteness attaching to it. The 

 Piripauan includes the sequence of beds at Amuri Bluff below the Teredo 

 limestone, excluding the latter rock. It also excludes the " marlstone," 

 or " cannon-ball sandstone," probably of Lower Cretaceous age, on which 

 the Upper Cretaceous beds rest unconformable. The Piripauan in North 

 Canterbury includes both coal-beds and marine rocks. 



As thus denned both Clarentian and Piripauan are group names, em- 

 bracing each a considerable thickness of rocks, but as Wood's" researches 

 show that each has a faunistic unity they may be also considered as names 

 of series. The period of the Notocene between these two divisions is not 

 at present known to be represented by fossiliferous rocks in the New Zealand 

 area. 



Marshall's Wangaloa series is apparently based collectively on the beds 

 of Wangaloa, Brighton, and Hampden, which he correlates with one another. 

 The reasons given for this correlation are not entirely satisfactory, and are 

 practically only that in each of these three localities species with Cretaceous 

 affinities are found. These species are different in each of the three localities, 

 and two of them at least, Trigonia neozelanica Suter and Trigonia n. sp., 

 are not really proved to have any Cretaceous affinities. The genus Trigonia 

 is divided by ornament into several sections, each of which has a restricted 

 stratigraphical range, and Trigonia neozelanica is distinctly of a post- 

 Cretaceous type. If the new species mentioned is similar, this will leave 

 only Avellana tertiaria Marshall of the Hampden fossils as a Cretaceous 

 survival. This species is not shown to have any near relative in the New 

 Zealand Cretaceous. 



Previous collections at Hampden have not disclosed any notable differ- 

 ences from the faunas of the Oamaruian. Hutton (1887), indeed, found 

 no difficulty in placing the Hampden beds in the Pareora system — 

 i.e., Awamoan ; but McKay (1884) on stratigraphical grounds considered 

 them the correlatives of those overlying the coal-beds in the district 

 inland of Oamaru — i.e., of the Waiarekan ; and Park (1905) came to 

 a similar conclusion. The latter view seems the most reasonable in 

 the present state of our knowledge, as we know now that Hutton's 

 Pareora fauna was composed of a mixture of Awamoan and Waiarekan 

 fossils, and that he placed other Waiarekan beds in the Pareora 

 system. Marshall apparently considers the Waiarekan as Miocene ; but 

 although there is some direct evidence in favour of the Miocene age of 

 the Ototaran, contradicted in this case by other evidence, there is none 

 yet adduced, beyond the imperfectly known percentage of Recent species, 

 to prove that the Waiarekan is Miocene. It hardly seems necessary to point 

 out that if the present New Zealand fauna is the direct descendant of the 

 Oamaruian fauna without important immigrations, as Marshall seems to 

 hold, the percentages of Recent species in the Oamaruian is likely to be much 

 greater than in its correlatives in Europe, where successive recessions and 

 transgressions of the sea in the Tertiary caused bodily migrations of the 

 faunas, and the cold of the late Pliocene and the Glacial Epoch forced the 

 greater number of the species surviving the early Pliocene into more southern 



