A REMARKABLE MAORI MANUSCRIPT. 287 



The information ought to be put on record, as it is likely 

 to become an unauthenticated tradition. Well, in the 

 first place, the old gentleman of fuss and fossils used to 

 entertain a number of superstitious beliefs concerning 

 geological structure. He talked with frightful sonority 

 and ostentation about " groups," and " systems,'' and 

 " dips," and " strikes," and " unconformabilities," and 

 " faults." He believed that the different minerals were 

 most likely to be found in particular formations, and he 

 set himself to work so he said to ascertain what were 

 the formations underlying the province, and what was 

 their order of superposition ; so he built the phrases. 

 What do the people care about formations which lie a 

 hundred or a thousand feet beneath their yam-patches ? 

 What they want more to know is what part of their 

 farm conceals a coal mine or a kauri-gum mine. What 

 do they care for " superposition," as long as they can see 

 for themselves that a fortune in oil is revealed by the 

 film on the creek, or by the rank aroma which stimu- 

 lates their pituitary membranes and their cupidity? But 

 the old-fashioned man with a hammer in his hand and a 

 note-book in his pocket must proceed to make out a cata- 

 logue of formations in due order of " superposition. " 

 This, he told us, was the central problem to be resolved. 

 How did he go to work? 



I will tell you. He pretended there was a necessity 

 for knowing something about the relative elevation of 

 different parts of the province. The underlying strata, 

 he said, are not placed horizontally and in regular suc- 

 cession. They have been tilted up, so that the edge of a 

 stratum seen at the surface at a given point runs along 

 near the surface for a considerable distance, and this he 



