598 Transactions. 



Pukaki and bounding the Jollie River, stood at a height of 6,000 ft. above 

 the sea. 



The Omarama Basin was the gathering-ground and centre of movenaent 

 ■of the ice-sheet in this region. From Omarama a stream passed south- 

 ward through the Lindis Pass, joining the Chitha glacier a short distance 

 above Bendigo ; but the main Waitaki glacier turned eastward, flowing 

 down the present valley to the sea. 



The ice surmounted and flowed around the south side of Kurow Hill, 

 at the mouth of the Hakataramea River, its course being clearly marked 

 by ice-shorn surfaces and morainic drift for some six miles below the 

 junction of that river, as first noted by Haast. The present gorge of the 

 Waitaki River from Kurow to Awakino is of post-glacial date, the old 

 glacial valley lying behind Kurow Hill. 



On emerging from the mountains the Waitaki glacier, which was 118 

 miles long, deployed to the north and south, to the southward passing 

 over and deeply eroding the triangular area of older marine Tertiaries lying 

 between Oamaru and the Kakanui Range ; to the northward flowing over 

 the foothills lying between the Hakataramea and Waimate. 



The hills along the seaward front of the Waitaki glacier are covered 

 with a thick deposit of yellowish-brown clay or loess. In a few places near 

 Oamaru, and on the old Holmes Estate, the loess contains intercalated 

 beds of gravel ; and along the present sea-face, from Oamaru past Cape 

 Wanbrow to the mouth of the Awamoa Stream, a bed of beach-gravel 

 containing many recent marine shells occurs at its base. 



The Tertiaries on the north side of the Waitaki are truncated into 

 plateau-like hills and ridges, while the spurs on the side of the range behind 

 Waimate are in places excavated into glacial shelves, and everywhere 

 exhibit beautiful, smooth, flowing contours. Behind Waimate the glacial 

 shelves extend along the flank of the range for thousands of yards, about 

 half-way up to the summit. 



The Rangitata, Ashburton, Rakaia, and Waimakariri valleys are, as 

 reported by Haast and Speight, U - shaped valleys, the present deep 

 channels in which the rivers in places run having been excavated along 

 the floor of the glacial valleys since the close of the glacial period. Where 

 these rivers emerge from the moimtains the spurs and slopes are, as noted 

 by Haast, Hutton, and Speight, ice-shorn and truncated, and in places 

 terraced to a height of 3,500 ft. or 4,000 ft. above sea-level. The ice must 

 have stood 1,000 ft. or more above that level to give it efiective eroding- 

 power at the 3,500 ft. contour. But even if we assume that the surface 

 of the ice stood no higher than 3,500 ft., it is obvious, on gravational 

 grounds, that the Waitaki, Rangitata, Rakaia, Ashburton, and Wai- 

 makariri glaciers, when they deployed from their mountain gorges, must 

 have united into one great ice-sheet that presented a continuous face to- 

 wards the sea along the present site of the Canterbury Plains. 



Haast estimated, from the evidence of glacial terraces and roches mou- 

 tonnees, that the Waitaki glacier was about 5,000 ft. thick in its middle 

 portion. 



The evidences of ancient glaciation on the east side of the main 

 divide are conspicuous at Lake Coleridge, in the Rakaia Valley ; at Lake 

 Sumner, in the Hurunui Valley ; at Lake Guyon, in the Upper Waiau ; 

 at Lake Tennyson, in the Upper Clarence ; at Lake Rotoroa, in Nelson ; 

 and at Boulder Lake, in Collingwood. At these places, it should be noted, 

 there are no existing glaciers. The mammillated Gouland Downs ; the ice- 



