26 Notices of Memoirs — Br. Hector's Neio Zealand Geology. 



II. — New Zealand Geology. Eeports of Geological Explorations 

 during 1879-80. James Hector, M.D., F.K.S., Director. 

 (Wellington, 1881.) 



THE Geological Survey of New Zealand appears to be making 

 good progress. During the season 1879-80 a number of 

 important explorations have been made, so that nearly four thousand 

 square miles have been added to the general mapping of the colony, 

 mostly in the Auckland, Canterbury, and Otago districts. 



Full details of these surveys are given by Messrs. Cox and 

 McKay, accompanied by maps, sections, and lists of the fossils 

 collected. In a prefatory chapter or progress report. Dr. Hector 

 summarizes the general results of the work done, and shows the 

 important additions they have made to the knowledge of the 

 geological structure and economical substances of the districts 

 examined, and introduces some remarks on the comparison of the 

 geology of New Zealand with that of Australia, and gives a table of 

 the fossiliferous formations of the two countries. 



" On the whole, the geological record, so far as yet known, is more 

 complete in the New Zealand than in the Australian area. The 

 Tertiary strata are perhaps equally well developed, and the distin- 

 guishing facies of each existing fauna is discernible as early as the 

 Eocene formations. The Upper Mesozoic formations are very 

 imperfectly represented in Australia, but have enormous develop- 

 ment in New Zealand, in which country, as in America, the Tertiary 

 facies of the fauna and flora springs from a shore-line and land- 

 surface of pre-Cretaceous age. This is the period of the chief coal 

 deposits in New Zealand. 



" It was in the Lower Mesozoic period that the greatest divergence 

 in the character of the deposits prevailed in the several areas. In 

 Australia marine Jurassic formations, which can be determined by 

 their fossils, are not extensively developed, while the characteristic 

 fauna of the Trias has not yet been detected (with the exception of 

 Estheria, recently noticed in the core excavated by the diamond 

 drill from under the Sydney sandstone) ; fossil plants, which are 

 most uncertain guides, being alone found in the strata which must 

 be referred to that period. In New Zealand, on the other hand, 

 three divisions of the Jurassic formation have been distinguished by 

 their abundant fossil contents. A Liassic formation has a fair 

 develoj)ment, while an Upper Trias or Eh^tic formation has an 

 importance due to thickness and variety of fossils which is unknown 

 elsewhere. The Trias, with its very characteristic molluscan fauna, 

 is largely developed, and also occurs in New Caledonia. With- 

 out any marked break the sequence in New Zealand passes down 

 into a thick formation with Permian fossils, but associated with 

 forms found in the Trias, while the more strictly Palseozoic elements 

 of the Permian fauna are absent. This is followed in New Zealand 

 by a gap, and the next formation, which is the Lower Carboniferous 

 and Upper Devonian, is the latest formation, according to our 

 present evidence, which appears to have been common to Australia 



