OTAGO INSTITUTE. 



Seventh Meeting : l'2th October, 1909. 



Professor Park, President, in the chair. 

 New Member. — Dr. Sydney Allen, 

 Papers. — 1. " The Making of a Concordance," by W. H. Trimble. 



2. " The Fascination of Egypt," by Dr. D. Colquhoim. 



3. " The Reclothing and Repeopling of New Zealand after the Glacial 

 Period," by Professor James Park. 



The following is a summary of the President's closing remarks on the glaciation 

 discussion : — 



The author, repl3ing to the criticisms of Mr. (i. M. Thomson and Dr. Benham, 

 stated that his belief that the greater portion of the South Island, as we now know it, 

 was covered with a more or less continuous ice-sheet, resulting from the confluent glaciers 

 descending from the alpine highlands, was based on the existence of the great coastal 

 Taieri moraine ; the glacial deposits at Waikouaiti and lower \\'aitaki Vallej' ; the coastal 

 loess at Oamaru, Timai-u, Banks Peninsula, and north Canterbury- ; the glacial drifts 

 on the shores of Golden Bay ; and the extensive morainic deposits in the maritime 

 littoral of west Nelson and Westland. If the glaciation was caused by elevation, a 

 view endorsed alike by geologists and biologists, then the fact should not be overlooked 

 that the uplift woidd unite the two Islands and establish land connections with the sub- 

 antarctic and other outlying islands situated on the New Zealand marine plateau. Pleis- 

 tocene New Zealand vs'ould then possess continental dimensions with an area probably 

 exceeding 400,000 square miles in extent, of which it is estimated that not more than 

 75,000 square miles of the existing land was covered with ice. Life could not exist on . 

 the glaciated portion ; but since secular uplift is excessively slow, seldom amounting to 

 more than a few inches in a century, the climatic changes would be correspondingly 

 slow, which would thus permit the fauna and flora to migrate to the unglaciated area. 

 In the Northern Hemisphere the slow advance of the northern ice-sheet forced the exist- 

 ing life to migrate to the south, whence it returned on the recession of the ice. This is 

 obviously what took place in New Zealand. Mr. Thomson and Dr. Benham had seem- 

 ingly overlooked the signilicance of the elevation, «-hich provided a safe retreat for the 

 existing animal and vegetable life. On the recession of the ice, due to the gradual sub- 

 sidence of the land, the life returned to its present habitat. And as the first eft'ect of 

 the elevation would be to establish a land bridge between the two Islands, so the last 

 effect of the subsidence would be the disseverance of the Islands. Mr. Thomson and 

 Dr. Benham have contended that insufficient time has elapsed since the separation of 

 the Islands for the differentiation of certain species of plants and animals. The former 

 stated that one effect of the glaciation of the Northern Hemisphere was to produce a 

 deciduous type among the woodj' plants, and the same effect he thought should have 

 been produced by glaciation among the evergreen flora of New Zealand. This conten- 

 tion must completely fail, as Mr. Thomson has overlooked the fact that the deciduous 

 type did not come in with the Glacial Period, but appeared in Europe and America two 

 geological epochs before that time. It merely retreated before the advancing ice, and 

 returned as the ice receded northward. It is not yet ascertained what time has elapsed 

 since the close of the Pleistocene. Moreover, there is no evidence whatever that the 

 differentiation of the New Zealand species did not take place before the Gla'cial Epoch, 

 as did that of the deciduous plant and animal Iffe in the Northern Hemisphere. Dr. 

 Benham's statement that there is no evidence that a period of greater cold existed in 

 the Southern Hemisphere during the Pleistocene is opposed to the views of Haast, Hutton, 

 and McKay ; and contrary to the conception of Darwin, Dana, Agassiz, Geikie, Prest- 

 wich, Chamberlin, Salisbury, and Gregory, aU of whom believe that the Southern Hemi- 

 sphere suffered a period of glaciation contemporaneously with the Pleistocene glaciation 

 of the Northern Hemisphere. 



Exhibit. — Dr. Pickerill exhibited a series of Maori skulls, and drew at- 

 tention to some pathological conditions of their teeth, especially to the 

 peculiar rotation of the first molars through 90°, by loosening of the roots 



by 



abscess. 



