FofiBES. — On Allan Bcmains found near Tiniaru. 367 



had the goodness to meet me at the Timaru Eaihvay-station, 

 and afterwards to introduce me to Mr. Stubbs, the Secretary 

 of the County Council, by whom these bones \Yere first ob- 

 served and their discovery pubHcly intimated, and at whose 

 office in town I examined the specimens he had collected. Of 

 these, the largest, nearly Bin. in length, were undoubtedly 

 portions of Dinornis bones of one of the greater forms ; but to 

 what species they belong I was unable, on so cursory an 

 examination, to determine; nor were the fragments, indeed, in 

 many cases, in identifiable condition. 



These fossils were discovered in the ravine of the Gleniti, 

 an affluent of Saltwater Creek, which is in turn a tributary 

 of the Otopara, in what is known as " Number -Two- ]\Iole 

 Quarry," because out of it that breakwater of the Timaru 

 Harbour works was being constructed. Mr. Hogben and Mr. 

 Stubbs obligingly accompanied me to the locality, distant from 

 the town a mile or two in a south-south-westerly direction. 

 There I met the manager of the works, to whom my thanks 

 are due for his kindness in explaining to me the operations 

 that had been going on for the past two years, and the charac- 

 ter of the rocks and strata he had cut through. Some account 

 of my observations on this occasion and of the bones found 

 ought, I feel, to be put on record in the Institute Transactions. 



The quarry formed a crescentic excavation, commencing at 

 the front of the escarpment of the ravine, some 40ft. or 50ft. 

 above the level of the stream, and had in its centre been 

 worked out northwards to the depth of about 150ft. The 

 section exposed at the time of my visit had continued all the 

 way from the quarry-front with little alteration. The accom- 

 panying sketch (PI. XXXYL, fig. 1) shows in a diagrammatic 

 for"! the succession of the strata, and will render intelligible 

 the description of the beds, which occur as nearly as possible at 

 the same levels on both sides of the ravine. The uppermost 

 layer, A, is composed of tenacious yellow clay, and forms the 

 surface of the ground in this district. It presents all the 

 characters of the clay flanking the Port Hills, near Christ- 

 church, and is, I believe, the formation designated by the 

 name of "loess" by my predecessor. Sir Julius von Haast. 

 This stratum extends to a depth of from 26ft. to 28ft., and is 

 supported on a deep dolerite belt, B, wliich is the raison d'etre 

 of the quarry. For a few inches at its top and bottom sur- 

 faces the dolerite presents a more vesicular and slag-like 

 character than the rock composing the bulk of its intervening 

 mass, wliich is fine-grained and crystalline. Through its 

 centre runs longitudinally a band of still finer grain, more 

 highly crystalline and more brittle than its over- and under- 

 lying portions. The quarriei-s had given it the name of "flint- 

 band," from its hardness, and because, when blasted, it broke 



