GLACIATION PROBLEMS IN N.Z. 211 



finding of moraines in the Waimarino Forest to the west of Ruapehu. 

 On account of these discoveries he has extended the limits of the 

 Pleistocene Glaciation much further north so as to include the greater 

 portion of the mountain axis of the North Island stretchirg 

 from Wellington to near East Cape. He explains the landscape 

 features in the neighbourhood of Wellington as due to glaciation, 

 and supposes that a great glacier once occupied the site of Cook 

 Strait and produced the special land forms to be seen in its vicinity. 

 It may be remarked here that in the same volume Bell attributes 

 these features in the immediate vicinity of Wellington to the results 

 of great crustal movements, notably faulting. Park has also 

 recorded the existence of huge moraines in the valleys of the 

 Awatere and other rivers on the east coast of Marlborough. 



The whole matter of this remarkable extension of the glaciers 

 as postulated by Park is most difficult to handle in a short report, 

 but it must be said that his views are quite at variance with the 

 mature opinions of former geologists of standing and wide experience, 

 such as Haast, Hector and Hutton. Both Park's observations and 

 his interpretation of them have been strongly criticised by Marshall 

 on geological grounds, and his conclusions have been criticised by 

 Thomson on botanical grounds, in the same volume of the Trans- 

 actions in which Park's papers appear. Cockayne has also a short 

 note to the same effect in his report on the Botanical Survey of 

 Stewart Island. These two botanists have maintained that the 

 present distribution and ecological requirements of the indigenous 

 plants could not possibly result if Park's Ice-sheet hypothesis is 

 granted. It must be observed, however, that he is not altogether 

 consistent in that at times he looks upon his ice covering as due 

 entirely to elevation of the land, and his hypothesis then amounts 

 merely to an extension of the present glaciers far farther than ever 

 has been demanded by other geologists of considerable experience. 

 At other times he apparently regards the ice covering as a true ice- 

 sheet and as an extension of the Polar ice cap which crossed the sea 

 to the south of New Zealand. These two positions are hardly 

 tenable at the same time. 



Judging from my own observations in the middle district of the 

 South Island, Park's conclusions are not founded on satisfactory 

 evidence, and his recent map, which shows the whole of Canterbury 

 as covered with ice, cannot be accepted as correct. There is no 

 proof whatsoever that glaciers came out any further on the plains 

 than was recorded by Haast, if indeed they came as far, and Banks 

 Peninsula was certainly not covered by ice. The loess of the 

 Canterbury Plains is not a boulder clay except in so far that it has 

 been formed by the grinding action of glaciers on stones contained 

 in their mass or on rock over which they have passed, the fine powder 

 resulting therefrom being subsequently distributed over the land 

 by river and wind action. 



His conclusions as regards the glaciation of all the central 

 portion of the North Island appear to be based on somewhat 

 slender evidence. 



