372 Transactions. — Geology. 



In the Gleniti quarry section I could detect no stratification 

 in the uppermost stratum, A, nor in the bone-bearing bed, C ; 

 and I believe the upper deposit certainly to be due in chief 

 part to the decomposition of the underlying dolerite going on 

 for a long period. The same explanation should apply to the 

 lower also. I can see no evidence of its being other than a 

 subaerial formation. There is e\ddence also, I think, strongly 

 pointing to the dolerite outflow having been laid down not, as 

 Sir Julius von Haast has thought, under the sea, but on a 

 land-surface. 



I come now to determine the age of this bone-bearing bed. 

 According to Professor Hutton," " there is no trace of volcanic 

 action having taken place in the South Island during this [the 

 Wanganui] system or later." As the "Wanganui system" is 

 referred in the same paper to the Pliocene period, it follows 

 that the age of the bones below the lava-sheet at Gleniti must 

 be, according to Professor Hutton, of Miocene age. The bed 

 underlying the bone-bed is, as I have already said, a rough 

 red shingle which belongs, with little doubt, to "the Moutere 

 gravels " that underlie the Canterbury Plains — that is, the 

 alluvial fans. Professor Huttonf considers these gravels to 

 belong to " the upj)er part of the [Pareora] system." In the 

 classification, however, adopted by the Geological Survey, the 

 Moutere gravels are assigned to Pliocene age. J The clay 

 overlying them may therefore probably be of newer Pliocene, 

 or even Pleistocene age. Volcanic activity would conse- 

 quently appear to have continued in the South Island, as it 

 has done in the North Island, down to times much later than 

 Miocene. 



Mr. Mantell found in 1848 a fragment of a bone, im- 

 possible of certain identification, but supposed to be bird's, 

 and from its size a moa's, in a septarmvi from Moeraki 

 Beach, in Otago ; but, as reptilian bones have since been 

 obtained from the same horizon, it was probably of this 

 nature. The bones described in the present paper are, how- 

 ever, the first that can be ascribed without hesitation to 

 Dinornis and Apteryx, and are the oldest certain remains of 

 these interesting birds. 



Note. — The report "On the Geological Formation of the 

 Timaru District, in reference to obtaining a Supply of Water," 

 illustrated by sections, made to the Provincial Council of 

 Canterbm-y in 1865 by the late Sir Julius von Haast, may 

 be consulted for geological sections of the strata exposed in 

 the neighbourhood of the Gleniti Valley. 



* Quart. Jour. Geol. Soc. Lond., p. 217. 



t Loc. cit., p. 209. 



: Kep. Geol. Surv., 1878-79, p. 3. 



