600 GEOLOGY OF THE WESTEEX COALFIELDS, 



Devonian Conglomerates, in which case they are well rounded ; 

 sometimes from the fossiliferous heds in the neighbourhood, in 

 which case they are slightly rounded upon the angles, but retain 

 a generally prismatic form ; and it is in these that the Ehyn- 

 chonellas, Spirifers, and Trilobites are found. 



Many of these blocks are of very large size, five or six feet 

 in diameter, and are nevertheless mixed up like plums in a pudding 

 with the finer grained matrix in which they lie. Some of these, 

 as notably near ' Stone House,' two miles north of Capertee, are 

 finely polished, (as are also fragments of hard conglomerate near 

 E-ound Swamp). But there is, so far as I could see, no positive 

 evidence of glacial striation, nor does the character of the polish 

 connect it with glacial action. Nevertheless I feel assured that 

 no other agency than that o-f great mountain glaciers, feeding 

 strong watercourses, which were also subject to violent but 

 occasional floods, as at the melting of the superficial snows in 

 spring, could ever have piled up, or rather spread out, the coarse 

 alluviums of which I write. The polish of the several blocks I 

 take to have been given by long continued drift of sand, impelled 

 either by wind or water, over them. And the fact that the larger 

 pieces, and therefore the most permanent in position on beach or 

 strath, are the better polished, seems to me to confirm my view. 



But in this Conglomerate are also intercalated Shales, of 

 evidently freshwater origin, and full of leaves ; while even in the 

 rude mass itself one can recognize portions of woody tissue, 

 partly carbonized, and partly converted into pyrites. All these 

 phenomena point very clearly to such an origin as has been 

 indicated above. Great Stratlis, Links, and Estuary formations 

 occupied the lower valleys and coasts of an Archipelago or Island 

 Continent (like New Zealand) whose mountain summits were 

 snow clad, whose upper valleys were occupied by great glaciers, 

 and whose enormous waste and detritus was hurried do^n to 

 near the sea level by streams too impetuous and too irregular to 

 sort out their material. The glacier moraines supplied the stuff ; 



