342 EEPORTS OF RESEARCH COMMITTEES. 



C. T. Trechmaiin* has come to the conclusion that '' there is 

 no evidence of Pleistocene glaciation in the North Island," and 

 that ' ' in the South Island the glaciation was of an alpine and not 

 of a regional type." The material of a range of hills that had 

 come to be known as the Taieri " moraine " he has determined as 

 non-glacial and certainly older than Pleistocene. He has also ex- 

 pressed the opinion that the large boulder described by Park in 

 the Rangitikei valley (North Island) as glacial is not so, but 

 became striated in sliding down a slope. 



G. H. Uttleyt has verified by stratigraphical evidence the de- 

 termination of the structure of North Otago, and the Waitaki 

 valley made by Cotton on physiographic evidence, and has traced 

 a number of faults and defined several of the smaller uplifted 

 blocks in that district. 



SECTION C. 



4. — Cainozolc Climate Committee. 



{By R. Speight, M.A., F.GS., Secretary.) 



A study of the palseontological and jDihysiographical evidence of 

 the Australasian region shows that during the early and middle 

 part of the Tertiary era, the climate of the area as a whole was 

 warmer than at present, but that at the close of the era it became 

 colder, when glacial conditions set in, and that this period cf 

 refrigeration was attended and folloiwed by a more pluvial climate 

 with drier conditions continuing up to the present. 



The changes in the general character of the climate ol South- 

 eastern Australia are well set out in a coonmunication received 

 from Mr. Fred. Chapman, A.L.S., Palaecntologist to the National 

 Museum and Lecturer on Palaeontology at the Melbourne Uni- 

 versity. He says: — "Since the meeting of the Association in 

 Melbourne in January, 1913, the writer has published his results 

 Gu the stratigraphy of the deep boTings in the Mallee. (Cainozolc 

 Geology of the Mallee and other Victorian Bores : Rec. Geol. 

 Survey of Victoria, vol. Ill, pt. 4, 1916.) On pp. 381-383 of 

 this report brief reference is made to some evidence of change of 

 climate from the Miocene to^ the Holocene in Southern Australia 



• C. T. Trechmann, The Glacial Controversy in New Zealand, Qeological Magazine, decade 6, 

 vol. 4, pp. 241-45, 1917. 



t G. H. Uttley, Tertiary Geology of the Area between Wharekuri and the Otiake River, 



North Otago, Tram. N.Z. Inst., voK'52, pp. 154-68, 1920 Tertiary Geology 



of the Area between the Otiake River (Kurow District) and Dnntroon, North Otaao, Trans. 

 N.Z. Inst., vol. 52, pp. 137-53, 1920. 



