HardCxVSTLE. — Oil the. Drift in South Caiiterbiir//. 319 



natural colour lying above, ^Yith ferruginous beds of the same 

 material beneath." On page 63 is an Appendix, a special re- 

 port on the coast cliffs at the mouth of the Ashburton, whicli 

 accords Avith my recollection of them, and shows clearly, to 

 my mind, that these cliffs arc wholly built up of the red gravels 

 of the first cold age, the blue or grey gravels of the second 

 cold age not having reached the present coast-line there. I do 

 not know the coast-country between the Ashburton and Ea- 

 kaia, but I venture to assert that investigation will show that 

 the western margins of the swamps between the Ashburton 

 and Eangitata, and between the Eakaia and Waimakariri, are, 

 approximately, the eastern margins in those localities of the 

 shingle-fans laid down during the last cold age. 



The " distinct line of demarcation," visible between the 

 upper and lower shingle in the Ashburton terraces, the " very 

 distinct line " dividing the bluish from the yellow shingle in 

 several rivers, the small bed of loam between them over which 

 water drips (an old soil), these are marks we should expect to 

 find at the junction of the surface of plains of the red-gravel 

 age with later deposits upon them. Had the pioneer geologist 

 of Canterbury recognized the meaning and importance of these 

 marks, and of the difference of colour and condition of the 

 gravels above and beneath them, he would have supplied quite 

 another context to his italicized sentence (on page 16) : " Front 

 that moment the formation of the Canterhury Plains began.'' 

 Indeed, he must barely have missed seeing the necessity for 

 doing so, for (on page 46) he writes, under the head of " Eiver 

 Waimakariri," " On that part of the plain between the junc- 

 tion of the Kowai and the Gorge Hill, there is ... . 

 evidence .... that before the Pleistocene fan was 

 formed older formations of a similar nature existed here." 

 The Canterbury Plains, I conclude, not only belong to two 

 periods, but the grey gravels of the later fans are only super- 

 ficial, v.hich brings them into proportion with the small and 

 shallow fans of the smaller rivers of South Canterbury. 



To explain the existence of the red gravels, to account for 

 the severity of climate necessary for their production, we must 

 suppose either that New Zealand was elevated some thousands 

 of feet or that tlie cold was due to a general refrigeration of 

 the hemisphere— a glacial epoch. I do not intend to do more 

 on tJiis head than to make one remark and offer one sugges- 

 tion. In view of the jiroofs of glacier action since discovered 

 in the mountains of southern Australia and southern Africa, 

 together with the previously known proofs of mighty frost- 

 work in Patagonia, the elevation theory could scarcely be so 

 readily adopted or so vigorously supported now as it was 

 fifteen years ago ; and seeing that we have in New Zealand 

 the records of two distinct periods of i-efrigeration, the more 



