FoBBEs. — On Avian Bcmains found near Timaru. 371 



of rock more or less rounded, the lines of junction being often 

 impossible to trace owing to the decomposition of the volcanic 

 rocks immediately below the slope-deposits." This atmo- 

 spheric decomposition is certainly to a great extent the true, 

 and personally I believe almost the sole, explanation of this 

 formation on Banks Peniusula, and I feel confident that it ex- 

 plains also very largely that occm'ring at Timaru. In nume- 

 rous places on Banks Peninsula is to be seen the volcanic rock, 

 with its external surface for some distance down absolutely 

 converted into clay in situ, and requiring only a touch of the 

 fingers to cause it to fall down and mingle with, and be indis- 

 tinguishable from, the clay, already fallen, covering the surface 

 of the hill. Below this entirely-decomposed layer the rock is 

 seen to be greatly weathered, rotten, and yellow, and only not 

 disintegrated ; further down it is less and less changed, till the 

 unaffected rock is reached. This decomposed rock, as clay, 

 becomes under the varying atmospheric changes now a viscid 

 fluid, now a hardened clay, constantly gliding downwards. 

 One has only to traverse or sail round the peuinsula to see on 

 every hill-face the most marked evidences of this continual 

 downward movement, in the wave-like terraces, and in the 

 scars or breaks in the surface caused by these landslips, which 

 are constantly increasing mechanically the depth of the deposit 

 on the lower parts of the hills, while the chemical action of 

 the atmosphere is incessantly keeping up the supply not only 

 in the parts exposed to the air, but also in the rocks below 

 the deposit. These incessant landslips, sometimes extensive, 

 but more generally of no great magnitude, are, I feel confident, 

 the cause of the stratification — in my opinion, the /ct/sc-bed- 

 ding — which has been observed by Professor Hutton in a 

 secHcn near Lyttelton. In a considerable section recently 

 (November, 1890) re-exposed at the Farnley brickfields, at 

 the base of the Port Hills, not far from Christchurch, the 

 stratification-lines, which on close examination reveal none 

 of the certain marks of water-bedding, are most distinctly seen 

 to correspond with the demarcation-lines of different land- 

 slips. These landslips, the higher gliding over the lower, 

 would, as is evident, entomb whatever object might be 

 on the surface ; and thus can be easily explained the pre- 

 sence in deep layers of moa-bones, c"cc., and the rootlets of 

 plants. 



Both Professor Hutton and Dr. von Haast have remarked 

 on the absence in these Canterbury loess-deposits of the "loess- 

 babies," or marly concretions, seen in the loess of China. I do 

 not myself see the significance of their presence or absence ; 

 but I may mention here that I have gathered many hard marly 

 nodules of curious shapes in the Banks Peninsula deposit 

 since I went to reside on its hills. 



