Fauna and Flora of New Zealand. H'.\ 



Islands and Kerguelen's Land if they were of larger extent. 

 The influence of land in mitigating the effect of the icy ocean 

 is well shown by a comparison of New Zealand with St. Paul's 

 Island, in lat. 38° 10' S., on which the largest tree is only a 

 few inches in diameter. The Kerguelen trees therefore do 

 not imply a higher temperature than at present, but only a 

 greater extension of land, which we have already seen must 

 at one time have existed. We now turn to the evidence of 

 cold periods in the southern hemisphere, and we will take 

 New Zealand first. 



It was Dr. von Haast who first pointed out that the New- 

 Zealand glaciers had been far more extensive at some former 

 period than they are now*; and the evidence he brought 

 forward has been admitted by all. For example, there is 

 no doubt that at one time, not geologically remote, the 

 glaciers of the Waimakariri and of the Rakaia reached the 

 Canterbury Plains, and that a branch from the Upper Rakaia 

 passed through Lake Heron and joined the glacier coming 

 down the Rangitata. This former great extension of our 

 glaciers has been aptly called by Dr. von Haast our u Glacier 

 Epoch," to distinguish it from the "Glacial Epoch " of 

 Europe, with which probably it had no connexion. But we 

 have evidence of another and much earlier glacier epoch than 

 the one just mentioned. At Lawrence, in Otago, there is a 

 small rock -basin filled up with a conglomerate, the stones 

 of which have come from the west, and some of them are 

 distinctly marked by glacial stria3. This conglomerate can 

 be traced in a south-east direction to the Tokomairiro Plains, 

 proving that a glacier at one time descended a valley running 

 from the Tapanui Mountains to Kaitangata, quite across the 

 present drainage of the country. The lower part of this 

 valley has been filled up with rocks of Oligocene age, and we 

 have here, therefore, the proof of an Eocene glacier epoch f. 

 At Wharekauri, or Big Gully Creek, in the valley of the 

 Waitaki, there is also another rock-basin filled with Oligocene 

 rocks ; and at Castle Hill, on the road from Christchurch to 

 Hokitika, there is evidence of a third and still earlier glacier 

 epoch in a rock-basin, some eight miles long, which has been 



of a beech tree from Magellan which is more than 7 feet in diameter 

 (' Cruise of the Alert,' p. 91). 



* " Notes on the Geology of the Province of Canterbury," Cant, I'roc. 

 Gov. Gazette, 24th Oct. 18(52. 



f ' Geology of Otago,' p. 93, and Cox, Geol. Reports, 1678 9, p. 47. 



