812 Transactions. — Geology. 



6. Fine-bedded, loose, rusty, unfossiliferous sands, which 

 appear to be rearrangements by fresh-water of portions 

 of (7). 



7. FossiHferous sands of the Pareora (marine) formation. 

 Working upward again, at the upheaval of the Pareora 



sea-bed as a starting-point, we commence with a temperate, 

 or rather warm, climate, as shown (according to the authori- 

 ties) by the character of the Pareora fossils. This evidence 

 of the shells is fully corroborated by that of the physical cha- 

 racter of the marine beds close to steep mountains. The 

 inorganic material is uniformly fine ; there is no evidence of 

 frost-work in gravels, conglomerates, or breccias. 



The emergence of a sandy sea-bed would certainly be fol- 

 lowed by the rearrangement of some portions of it by rains 

 and streams, and to such a process, I think, must be referred 

 certain loose, rusty, fine-bedded, unfossiliferous sands, seen in 

 terrace sections in the valley of the Tengawai between 

 Pleasant Point and the Cave ; under the gouged western face 

 of Mount Horrible, and elsewhere. These fine-bedded sands 

 are of no great thickness, under 20ft. probably, as a rule, and 

 they rest upon sands of the same mineral character, but fos- 

 siliferous, and massive instead of fine-bedded. 



Deposited conformably upon the rearranged sands in the 

 Tengawai sections is a series of fresh-water beds, showing 

 150ft. or 200ft. in thickness in one exposure — Howell's Bluff 

 — and they may have been much thicker. These beds consist 

 of alternations of silts, clays, white sands and grits, and dirt- 

 beds. Some of the clays are full of beautiful plant-impres- 

 sions, and these should tell an instructive story to the botanist. 

 The physical characters of the beds, however, sufficiently attest 

 the warmth of the climate during their deposition. The white 

 grits perhaps supply the clearest and simplest evidence. They 

 aggregate, in the Howell's Bluff section, 30ft. or 40ft., in three 

 principal layers. The coarser grits are quite loose, and well 

 sorted and stratified. The fragments range in size up to that 

 of small peas. Most of them are well waterworn, "but a con- 

 siderable percentage are quite angular, only a little worn. 

 These are easily recognized as vein-quartz, and they suggest 

 that the whole of the quartz — grits and sands — was derived 

 from the highly metamorphosed, intricately-veined, slaty or 

 schistose rocks of The Brothers Mountain, four or five miles 

 away. Save for some rolled pellets of clay containing car- 

 bonized vegetable matter, the grit beds are of pure quartz, and 

 the total absence of slate pebbles shows clearly that in the 

 denudation of the mountain, by which the quartz was set 

 free, frost played no part. The whole series appears to have 

 been of slow growth, and there are marks of several pauses in 

 its deposition, in the dirt-beds and drought-veined surfaces of 



