by professor stephens. 345 



New Zealand. 



In New Zealand the Lower Carboniferous beds have as yet 

 yielded no plant remains. They consist in the lower beds of 

 limestones with characteristic marine fossils, gradually passing 

 upwards into unfossiliferous fine grained argillaceous slates. 

 (Hector, Outline, &c., p 78.) We are not warranted, it seems to 

 me, in assuming that the Lepidodendroid Flora of the Lower Car- 

 boniferous in Australia and Africa ever had existence in New 

 Zealand, although there must have been land surfaces, with some 

 kind of flora. 



That those islands were more or less directly connected with 

 Asia and Austi-alia during some part of the Mesozoic period is 

 extremely probable, if not absolutely certain. But there is 

 nothing to indicate any earlier connection on this side, and we 

 are quite certain that there was none in the subsequent ages ; 

 though it is probable enough that at more epochs than one New 

 Zealand may have formed an outlying portion of an Antarctic 

 continent. 



However this may be, the next in sequence, the Oreti-Kaihiku 

 series, regarded as Permian on the ground of its Molluscan fauna 

 (though containing also Saurian remains {Ichthyosaurus) and 

 Labyrinthodont (?) teeth, and remarkable for the " absence of 

 Spirifera, Productus, and the other usual Palaeozoic elements of a 

 Permian fauna," both of which facts appear to indicate a Mesozoic 

 rather than a Palaeozoic position, (Hector, lib. cit.), presents, in 

 its lower portion, a glacial conglomerate or boulder formation 

 " resembling the character described for the base of the Gond- 

 wana series in India," and above this one species at least of 

 Glossopteris. It is impossible to recognise in the marine fauna 

 here quoted (Permian Molluscs and Ichthyosaurus) or in the 

 (probably) Labyrinthodont remains, any resemblance to our 

 Upper Marine (Carboniferous) beds, however much they may 

 appear to correspond in their evidence of glacial action. 



