590 Transactions. 



I ascribed the cause of the glacial period to an elevation of the land, 

 which I estimated at not less than 3,000 ft. Reviewing all the evidence, I 

 expressed the opinion that during the period of maximum elevation it was 

 not improbable that the polar ice-sheet reached as far north as New Zealand. 



In my presidential address* to the Otago Institute in May, 1909, I 

 reviewed the evidence submitted in ray official report, and reaffirmed my 

 behef that the glacial period of New Zealand was Pleistocene, and in all 

 respects parallel with that of the Northern Hemisphere. And, arguing 

 from the evidences of glaciation in the Auckland, Campbell, and other 

 islands lying south of New Zealand, in Tasmania, and in South America, 

 I hazarded the opinion that all the land-areas in the Southern Hemisphere 

 up to corresponding latitudes were glaciated at the same time as New 

 Zealand. I further suggested that during this great southern Ice Age there 

 was probably an invasion of the Antarctic ice-sheet, in the same way as 

 in the Glacial epoch of the Northern Hemisphere there was an advance 

 of the Arctic ice-sheet. 



A close scrutiny of the topographical features of those portions of 

 Southland, Otago, and Canterbury lying on the east side of the axial divide 

 discloses evidence on aU hands that the present configuration of the surface 

 has been moulded by ice erosion. 



The slopes and summits of the Hector, and Eyre Mountains, overlooking 

 the South Arm of Lake Wakatipu, are ice-shorn up to a height of 5,500 ft., 

 the smooth, flowing outhnes of the former in particular standing up in 

 conspicuous and striking contrast to the sharply serrated and rugged 

 simimits of the adjoining Remarkables, that stood above the surface of 

 the Pleistocene ice-plateau. 



The Wakatipu region was the centre of movement of the ice-sheet 

 which flowed southward across Southland and eastward across Otago, the 

 track of the ice being plainly marked in a thousand places. 



The smooth, flowing contours, dome-shaped summits, truncated spurs 

 and ridges, and U-shaped valleys that are so well developed in the Waka- 

 tipu district can be traced from the Hector Mountains, opposite Kingston, 

 across the Hokonui HiUs to the Southland Plain, from which rise the Blufi 

 Hills, themselves merely gigantic ice-shorn roches moutonnees. From the 

 Upper Nevis, Nokomai, and Mataura the same smooth, rounded outhnes 

 can be followed eastward to Gore, and thence northward to Otago Pen- 

 insula, without a break except where recent fluviatile erosion has modified 

 the glaciated suiiaces. For example, near Athol the Mataura River and 

 its branches have eroded deep V-shaped channels in the older glaciated 

 slopes ; and so sudden is the change from the smooth, rounded contours 

 to the characteristic tent-shaped ridges and V-shaped valleys that the 

 contrast. but serves to emphasize the startling difference that exists in land- 

 forms modified by ice and by running water — a difierencfe so fundamental 

 and conspicuous that it needs not the trained eye of the topographer to 

 discern it. 



Sir Archibald Geikie, in his charming book on the " Scenery of Scot- 

 land," when discussing the origin of the smooth, rounded outlines of the 

 Scottish mountains, asks the question, " What agency other than ice is 

 capable of producing these forms ? " The ice-worn outhnes have been 

 traced down to the present coast-line between Southland and Dunedin. 



* James Park, " The Physiography and Glaciation of Otago," Otago Daily Times, 

 12th May, 1909. 



