from New Zealand. 295 



and Tasmania, but that the Maitai beds differ from the Perrno- 

 Carboniferous of Gondwanaland in being entirely marine. 



I also showed in a recent communication to the Geological Society 

 that the Kaihiku, the lowest known Mesozoic fossil-bearing horizon 

 in New Zealand, contains fossils of late Middle or early Upper Trias, 

 and is not as was formerly supposed of Permian age, and that the 

 Carnic, Norio, and Rhgetic horizons of the Upper Trias are well 

 represented. 



The Jurassic still remains the greatest terra incognita in New 

 Zealand palaeontology, and owing to the discontinuous nature of the 

 outcrops, the scarcity and indifferent state of preservation of the 

 fossils, its study will involve some difficulty. Several horizons seem 

 to be represented by the fossils, of which I have a considerable 

 collection. A knowledge of the Jurassic horizons which occur in 

 New Zealand is an important matter, because the determination of 

 the highest Jurassic and the lowest Cretaceous beds will indicate the 

 time limits during which New Zealand first became a land surface. 



It now seems to me quite clear that the New Zealand continent, 

 and the present New Zealand is the relic of a former land mass both 

 of continental dimensions and of continental faunal character, 

 originated some time about the period of the final fragmentation of 

 Gondwanaland. I am also inclined to think that its compression 

 and uplift are among the phenomena of readjustment consequent 

 upon that event. 



The Cretaceous rocks form the basal portion of the newer or 

 covering series, and where they occur they rest, as in Chili and the 

 Californian coast ranges, with a most pronounced unconformity on the 

 denuded edges of the folded and in part metamorphosed rocks beneath 

 them. The lowest Cretaceous marine horizon present will afford us 

 knowledge when the sea began once more to transgress upon the 

 margins of the old peneplaned and lowered land mass which had 

 arisen and been partly denuded during the period intervening, so 

 far as we know at present, between very late Jurassic and Dpper 

 Cretaceous times. 



The outcrops of the Upper Cretaceous beds in New Zealand are 

 well shown by Professor J. Park on a small-scale map. 1 



They occur in six or seven more or less isolated patches of greater 

 or less extent. The relations of the Cretaceous to the overlying 

 Tertiary series have given rise to much discussion, into which 

 however I do not propose to enter in the present paper. 



On the eastern side of the Alpine chain in the middle part of 

 the South Island, in the Waimakariri and Waipara gorges, the 

 marine Upper Senonian rests on the upturned edges of the older 

 rocks. This condition of things obtains also at Quinquina, on the 

 coast of Chili. In the north-eastern part of the South Island and 

 apparently also on the eastern side of the North Island some earlier 

 Cretaceous beds with Inoceramas occur. In this connexion it is 

 important to notice that in South Patagonia, between Lago 

 Argentino and Last Hope Inlet, on the eastern side of the Cordillera, 

 the Upper Senonian rests on beds containing Inoceramus Steinmanni, 

 1 The Geology of New Zealand, 1910, sketch-map. 



