74 Proceedings. 



were broadened, and the lakes deepened. Hard rocks were smoothed, polished, and 

 striated by the sheer weight of the moving mass of ice ; and everywhere the land-surfaces 

 presented rounded, inammillated, gently undulating contours — all the irregularities and 

 asperities of the country having been worn away by the movements of the enormous 

 mass of ice. Much of the land was covered with a sheet of boulder-clay, mainly com- 

 posed of transported rocks, and perched blocks, some of them of enormous size, were 

 left here and there on the ice-worn ridges. 



The lecturer said he would be able to show them that the evidences of prolonged 

 and intense glaciation were as conspicuous in New Zealand as they were in EurojDe. He 

 would show them that the slopes of the mountains, up to a height of 6,500 ft.. were ice- 

 shorn into what were, without doubt, the most marvellous tiers of ice-steps or benches 

 in existence. As evidence of the presence in the Pleistocene period of that great ice-cap 

 in Central Otago, he could show them ice-cut platforms, glacial lakes, eskars, moraines, 

 perched blocks, erratics, striated and jwlished rocks and boulders — in fact, all the 

 phenomena of the glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere. That conditions such as these 

 must have attended the presence of this ice-cap had obtained in New Zealand in com- 

 paratively recent times was a weird and mysterious thing — something, indeed, almost 

 incredible ; yet the evidence that this mass of ice had been all over Central Otago was so 

 fresh that thoy might easily imagine it had retreated only yesterday. 



There had been two phases of the Great Ice Age. The first was that in wh.ich there 

 had been a continuous ice-sheet extending from sea to sea, when 7,400 ft. of solid ice 

 .stood in the Wakatiini basin. In the second phase the valleys were filled with enormous 

 glaciers. 



The extent of these ice-rivers was surprising. There had been one that extended 

 westwa-rd from Alexp^ndra a distance of 140 miles — which meant that it was longer 

 than that great glacier traversed by Lieutenant Shackleton in Antarctica, which was 

 believed to be some 130 miles in length. The Wakatipu glacier had split into a numRei' 

 of streams. One passed southward towards Kingston, and another formed the Kawara\i 

 glacier, which presently joined with the Shotover glacier. These were joined by the 

 Arrow glacier, which was smaller, and. in consecpience, twisted round and jammed u]i 

 against the Crown Range, the slopes of which were wonderfully and beautifully scored. 

 To the action of the Arrow glacier was due the formation of the Crown Terrace, which 

 was excavated out of the solid rock. I' %| irj '"tj 



The pictures thrown on the screen showed many photographs of the rocks and 

 mountains of Central Otago. One di.sclosed a huge boulder of greywacke lying in a 

 country altogether foreign to it — in geological langup.,ge, a perched erratic. It had 

 been brought on the travelling ice-cap over lake, and mountain, and glen, from the 

 Livingstone feange to its present restmg-place. 



Another picture, which the lecturer described as the most remarkable of his 

 collection, showed the rocky side of Mount Benmore cut into a series of almost regular 

 rock-terraces. They were the most remarkable terraces or steps he knew of. There 

 was nothing like them in Europe, and no one could doubt their glacial origin. 



Close to Arrow there is a perched erratic rock, measuring 24 ft. by 12 ft. by 10 ft.. 

 and weighing 240 tons. It is an enormous mass, and yet geology proves that it rode 

 in a glacier all the way from the Livingstone Range. Indications point to its having 

 been nearer the bottom than the top of the ice-river, for a portion of it is deeply striated, 

 as if it had been dragged for many miles over a rock}^ surface. 



Other jnctures showed a clay bank at Henley, proving that this was the moraine 

 of a great glacier that had emptied itself into the sea comparatively close to Dunedin ; 

 and the Qtieenstown Domain, also an old moraine, and now covered with striated boidders 

 belonging to far-distant parts of the mountains. Near C'romwell was the old Kawarau 

 moraine, with its foreign and weirdly cut rocks. In fact, right over Central Otago were 

 .striated rocks in thousands, and erratic rocks in millions. 



Other pictures disclosed the secret of the formation of Moke Lake, near Moonlight. 

 Two glaciers had been forced out of the Wakatipu basin, and had come by separate 

 A-alleys down towards Moonlight. Truncating the ridge that separated them, they 

 had come together, and their united crushing-j'ower had torn out the '" twin " hole now 

 filled by Moke Lake. 



It was in a similar wa^/, by lateral branches from the \\'akatipu glacier, that Lake 

 Dispute had been formed. 



The shape of the hills throughout Otago and Southland indisputably proved glacia- 

 tion. There were the smooth contours and fiowing outlines that necessarily followed 

 the grinding process of a glacier. There were the ice-shorn mountain-tops, and the 

 gentle upward plane torji by the ice as it was pressed upwards, and the place where, 

 having reached the top, and the pressure behind removed, the glacier dropped suddenly 

 down. 



