Hill. — Artesian-water Basins of Herctaunga Flam. 431 



moraine now existing there. The discovery in this moraine of 

 blocks of greenstone or sandstone which could only have come 

 from the west side of Lake Wakatipu does not disprove the 

 theorv just put forward as to the origin of the Queenstown 

 moraine, as at the point where the tributary glacier joined the 

 main glacier there must have been considerable commingling 

 of material. Postulating, therefore, a glacier as once descending 

 the gorge west of Queenstown Hill, we see, from the amount of 

 river gravel and shingle deposited in the terrace at Queenstown, 

 and also from the shallow depth of Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown 

 Harbour, that after the glacier had ceased to flow, a stream of 

 considerable size must have flowed through the gorge and 

 deepened it to its present level, and therefore that when the 

 glacier existed it must have moved at an elevation considerably 

 above that of the present gorge, and this height may have been 

 sufficient to enable the glacier to deposit in their present position 

 the striated stones occuring on the hill-track. What subsequent 

 changes of level have caused the river which once flowed through 

 the gorge to flow no longer I am unable to state, but there can 

 be no doubt that a river did once flow through the gorge. 



The striated stones found on the carriage-track west of 

 Queenstown were in all probability deposited there by the 

 Lake Wakatipu glacier : there is no such difficulty of level as 

 exists in the case of the stones on Queenstown Hill to be met 

 in this case. 



Art. XLVIII. — The Artesian-water Basins of the Heretaunga 



Plain, HawJce's Bay. 



By H. Hill, B.A., F.G.S. 

 [Read before the Hawke's Ban Philosophical Institute, \9th September, 1904.] 



Plates XXXIV-XLI. 



The Town of Hastings is situated almost in the centre of what 

 is locally known as the Heretaunga Plain. Napier is at the 

 northern end of the plain, and Pakipaki, for our purpose, may 

 be set down as situated at the south end. Few persons, had 

 they known the plain as it was even forty years ago, would have 

 thought so many thriving settlements would have sprung up 

 in what was at that time an area just emerging from the con- 

 dition of impassable swamp. 



At the time of the arrival of the first European settlers in 

 Hawke's Bay the fertile area that is now the pride of the district 

 was an untrodden swamp. Only sixty years have gone by since 

 then, and it must be evident even to those not given to careful 

 observation that the changes mark a period of progress that 



