58 GEOLOGICAL NOTES ON KOSCIUSKO, 



(32, p. 176;, "It has been calculated that an elevation of 

 between 3,000 feet and 4,000 feet would be sufficient to expand 

 our glaciers to their former dimensions. That the New Zealand 

 Alps did formerly stand higher than now, we have direct evidence 

 in the deep fiords of South West Otago and Marlborough, which 

 must have been excavated when the land was considerably 

 elevated. The greatest depth recorded in the West Coast Sounds 

 is 1,728 feet in Break Sea Sound; but in many places no bottom 

 was reached with the line used, and we may safely assume that 

 when the valleys were scooped out they stood more than 2,000 

 feet higher than they do now, and this agrees fairly well with the 

 quite independent estimate that an elevation of 3,000 to 4,000 feet 

 would be sufficient to reproduce all the phenomena." Captain 

 Hutton thus considers the glaciation of Nev/ Zealand to have 

 occurred in Pliocene, perhaps older Pliocene time, and to have 

 been due to a former greater elevation of the New Zealand land. 



On the other hand, Dr. R. von Lendenfeld is strongly of 

 opinion that the former great extension of the New Zealand 

 glaciers took place in comparatively late geological time, and 

 that it was due to a glacial period synchronous with that which 

 caused the glaciation of Kosciusko (33, p. 808; and 12, p. 52). 



In the former paper above referred to. Dr. Lendenfeld states, 

 " The minuteness of the deltas mentioned above (at the heads of 

 the West Coast Sounds, N.Z.) would lead one to suppose that 

 they are of no great age, and comparing them to similar alluvial 

 formations which have been produced in the European Alps in 

 historic time, one must come to the conclusion that the Glacial 

 Period in New Zealand has not been more remote than 2,000 or 

 3,000 years. This would account also for the extremely fresh 

 appearance of the old moraines and ice scratches." In the latter 

 paper referred to he expresses the opinion that " the state of the 

 preservation of the roches moiUorinees in the Australian Alps is 

 nothing like so good as in the New Zealand Alps. I am, how- 

 ever, not inclined to ascribe that to a difference in age. I 

 consider it simply as a consequence of the difference in the rocks; 

 there hard metamorphosed slates, here granite." One of us (Mr. 



