SUBCUTANEOUS EROSION 



37 



but there are considerable tracts of country where the subcutaneous 

 processes described are subject to modification, where the different 

 appearance of the countryside itself deserves comment. There is in 

 central Tutira a considerable area of peaked country the "Dome," 

 the "Conical Hill," the "Razorback," (i Mata-te-Rangi," the "Pa Hill," 

 and other solitaries. These hills are of sandstone formation, more or 

 less weathered into points, as their names imply. Each of them is a 

 relic of a small fragment of tilted terrace from which the conglomerate 

 cap has gone, whose uncrowned top has been exposed to the elements ; 

 they are the scattered " teeth " of dislocated " comb " systems. Unroofed 

 by the action of rain, and in a minor degree by that of frost and wind, 



Fragment of terrace still rock-capped. 



Fragment from which cap has slid, 

 melting into a cone. 



they have been melted and moulded to cone and dome and razorback. 

 Peak formation in fact represents, on the east coast of the North Island 

 of New Zealand, the intermediate stage between the plateau of the far 

 past and the plain of the remote future. 



Subcutaneous erosion has played as curious a part about the bases 

 of these solitaries these erratics, if I may so call them as on the 

 slopes of the terrace system. However probable it might have seemed 

 that their dusty weatherings would have been deposited on the 

 surface, no such boon has blessed the land. Everywhere the ocean robs 

 the upland farmer, but nowhere more brazenly than on Tutira. Stuff 

 urgently needed for the amelioration of the surface of the run is borne 



