396 Prof. J. Park — Pleistocene Glaciation, New Zealand. 



happen. Either the boulder would incontinently tumble down to 

 the present level, or it would slide down if the slope of the terrace 

 face exceeded the angle of rest. When a heavy body descends on 

 a gravel face, the material in contact with the body moves downhill 

 at the same time, and this flovvage would not, in my belief, lend 

 itself to the smoothing and grooving of the heavy body. 



The large size of this solitaiy erratic, its transportation across the 

 Waiouru divide, its great distance from its source, its grooved and 

 striated underside, and the existence of a considerable glacier on 

 Mount Ruapehu, the place from which it originally came, have led 

 me to the conclusion that it was carried to its present site by a 

 Pleistocene extension of the lluapehu Glacier that flowed down the 

 Hautapu into the Rangitikei Valley. 



Further, I know of no agent but a glacier that could transport and 

 pile up the tumbled masses of andesitic rock that occur at widely 

 separated points of the Hautapu Valley. 



Turning to the South Island Mr. Trechmann deals mainly with tlie 

 Taieri or Henley deposit. He says that in his opinion this drift is 

 not glacial, and concludes that the glaciation was alpine and not of 

 a regional type. This great deposit has been shown by the careful • 

 mapping of Mr. A. Gr. Macd'?)nald, B.E., to extend from Saddle Hill, 

 near Dunedin, to the Clutha Valley, a distance of some 32 miles. 

 It occurs as a sheet on the west side of the coastal range that 

 separates the Taieri Valley from the sea. It rises from sea-level to 

 a height of 1,000 feet, and in many places forms conspicuous cliffs 

 near the summit of the range. A distinctive feature is its proneness 

 to form great landslides. Its thickness in the Taieri Gorge has been 

 estimated at 1,500 feet, but this is probably an underestimate. The 

 dip is to the westward at low angles. The lower portion is com- 

 posed of rudely bedded angular fragments of mica-schist and an 

 occasional large angular block of the same rock. The upper portion 

 of the deposit shows little sign of bedding, and generally the 

 material is coarser and large angular blocks moi'e plentiful than in 

 the lower portion. 



As Mr. Macdonald's maps ' clearly show, this deposit near Dun-edin 

 rests on the Oamaruian (Miocene) Coal-measures, at the Taieri 

 Gorge on Palaeozoic mica-schist, at Milton on the Oamaruian Coal- 

 measures, and further south on Kaitangatan (post-Senonian, probably 

 Danian) Coal-measures. Although mainly composed of mica-schist 

 blocks, slabs of limonitic conglomerate from the OamaruiaTi series 

 are not uncommon in the deposit on the range near Milton. The 

 Taieri deposit was always considered by Mr. J. T. Thomson and 

 Captain Hutton to be a glacial moraine, and Mr. McKay reported 

 that it looked like a glacial deposit. I have described it as fluvio- 

 glacial, and on no occasion during the glacial discussion in 1909 did 

 Dr. Marshall challenge its glacial origin. 



Mr. Trechmann states that he was struck with the dissimilarity of 

 this deposit to any glacial moraine that he had ever seen. To this 

 I would say that the rudelj'' stratified fluvio-glacial drifts in the 



' These manuscript maps are filed in Otago University. They were prepared 

 in connexion with a research scholarship held by Macdonald. 



