540 New Zealand Institute. 
Pakawau. During January, February, and March he was engaged on an 
examination of the Upper Buller District, between Rotoiti and the Maruia 
River, in order to determine the extent of the coal measures in this direc- 
tion and the thickness and value of the coal. He reports that they occur 
flanking the crystalline rocks which occur in Mount Murchison, and extend 
from there along the western flanks of the Spencer Mountains as far as the 
Matakitaki River, from which point foliated and talcose schists are found, 
also flanked to the westward by coal measures. The coal measures occupy 
the greater part of the area between the line indicated and the mouth of the 
Matakitaki River, at Hampden, being thrown into several sharp anticlinal 
and synclinal folds, lapping, at places, round bosses of granite ; the coal 
seams hitherto discovered vary from 2 feet 6 inches to 4 feet in thickness, 
and are of very superior quality. The upper beds of the coal measures 
consist of heavy beds of conglomerate, on which rest marly beds, and it is 
probably from this conglomerate that a large proportion of the gold in the 
Mangles has been derived, and not from reefs in the vicinity. At the base 
of the foliated and talcose schists in the Alfred River, Maruia, Mr. Cox 
found white and blue crystalline limestones interstratified with blue 
calcareous slates and carbon-schists, which resemble the Lower Devonian 
beds at Reefton. During May Mr. Cox further examined the beds at the 
Whau, Auckland, in order to see if any prospects existed of coal being 
found there; but reported that nothing fresh had been discovered and 
there was no probability of coal being found. 
Mr. McKay was engaged on Museum work until November, when he 
went to Oamaru, and was engaged until the latter end of December in 
making a collection of rocks and fossils, which were to form the nucleus of 
a museum at Oamaru, and examining the strata between there and the 
eastern slopes of the Kakanui Mountains. He endeavoured to prove the 
identity of the Shag Point and South Canterbury coal fields by means of 
their fossils, but failed to trace them farther south than the Kakanui River. 
He examined the chalk deposits at Cave Valley, and traced them south to 
Kakanui, opposite Mahemo, where they alternate with beds of Ototara stone 
and associated floes of basalt. Further south he examined the coal beds in 
the neighbourhood of Otepopo and the eastern slopes of the Kakanui Ranges 
to the Kurow River, and determined the rocks there as belonging to the 
Kakanui formation. Further west he examined the Otepopo slate quarries 
on the boundary of the Te Anau series, and thence proceeded to Moeraki 
and the district which has lately been bored, unsuccessfully, for coal, and 
on the western section where these beds crop out no trace of coal could be 
found. At Lyttelton he examined the deposits exposed in the cuttings for 
the new dock, and determined them as true loess, the proof being found in 
