546 Prof. J. Park — Tertiaries and Cretaceous, Neio Zealand. 



At Komiti Point the Tertiary Series contains a large assemblage 

 of fossils, the majority of which are found in the Waitematas, Mount 

 Brown, and Kakanui Beds. When reporting on these beds I placed 

 them in the Upper Eocene, 1 and there is no reason to doubt then- 

 relationship to the Waitemata and Oamaru formations. At Komiti 

 Point the Tertiaries rest on the highly denuded edges of the hydraulic 

 limestone, as seen in a very clear section exposed in the sea-cliffs. 

 These observations, it should be noted, merely confirmed the opinion 

 previously expressed by Professor Cox and Mr. McKay that the 

 older Tertiaries were unconformable to the Cretaceous Coal Series. 



Waipara District. — In the district there is a complete development 

 of the Cretaceous Series from the Weka Pass Stone down to the 

 basal conglomerates containing brown coal, as under: — 



1. Weka Pass Stone. 



2. Amuri Limestone, with Ammonites. 



3. Greensands. 



4. Sand and shaly clays, with septarian boulders containing Saurian 

 remains, Conchothyra parasitica, etc. 



5. Grits, conglomerates, and shales, with bands of impure brown coal. 



The Lower Tertiary Series is well developed, but the lowest 

 member, the Brown Coal-measures, is absent. When viewed in 



FIG. 4. Section at Komiti Point, showing unconformable relationship of Lower 

 Tertiaries and Cretaceous Coal Series. 1-4, Lower Tertiaries ; 5-7, shales 

 and chalky clays passing into hydraulic limestone. 



cross-section the Tertiary beds appear to follow the Weka Pass Stone 

 conformably. The members of the Tertiaries present are — 



1. Calcareous sandstone bands (Mount Brown or Mount Donald Beds). 



2. Greensands. 



3. Dirty greyish sandstones. 



4. Absent (conglomerate, shales, and brown coal). 



The failure at first to recognize the absence of the basal grits and 

 conglomerates of the series arose from the erroneous correlation of 

 the Ototara Stone with the Weka Pass Stone, the Cretaceous Series 

 with its Saurians and other Mesozoic forms being supposed in the old 

 Cretaceo-Tertiary days to be the horizontal equivalent of the Oamaru 

 Tertiary Series. 



According to this correlation, the Ototara Stone lay conformably 

 on Cretaceous strata at Waipara, and conformably on Tertiary strata 

 in a hundred other places both north and south of Waipara. JSTow 

 the Ototara Stone is the most persistent member of the Lower Tertiary 

 Series throughout New Zealand. According to its distance from the 

 old shore-line it is a sandy, sometimes pebbly, calcareous sandstone 



1 Geol. Eeports, 1885, pp. 164-9. 



