TRANSACTIONS 
NEW ZEALAND. INSIIIUII, 
ESC: 
I.—MISCELLANEOUS. 
Arr. I.—New Zealand a Post-glacial Centre of Creation. 
By T. H. Cocxsurn-Hoop, F.G.S. 
[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 9th December, 1876.] 
Carra Hurroy, in a paper which appears in the last volume of the 
* Transactions of the N.Z. Institute," has shown that the presumed cause 
of the shrinking of the glaciers of the New Zealand Alps to their present 
from their ancient colossal dimensions, is more than “a shrewd guess," 
and that the examination of its former and existing littoral marine fauna, 
goes far to prove that it was due—not to a change of climate during a 
period of Southern Polar Glaciation—but to the diminished elevation of 
that cordillera, combined with other influences, of which presently. He 
concludes his remarks with the following observation, “the evidences 
seem to be in favour of there never having been a Glacial Epoch in New 
Zealand, and consequently none in the Southern Hemisphere :” that is 
to say, that there never was a period when a general ice-cap covered 
these islands as it does the greater part of Greenland to-day, and as so 
many deem it an established fact that, pressing down from polar regions, 
a well nigh universal one overwhelmed the whole of nearly both hemis- 
pheres in post-pliocene times—against part of which theory New Zealand 
may be deemed to present very strong evidence. | 
The term “glacial” is a most convenient ope by which to designat? 
those periods of intense cold to which, in their turn, various portions of 
existing lands are now, and have in all time past been subjected from local 
causes which admit of explanation, as wellas from others affecting broad 
belts stretching, now in one meridian, now in another, towards the tropies, 
which may hereafter be understood, 
