36 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
see and measure. The land has been submerged, but to what extent we 
cannot tell. The proofs of this subsidence we at present adduce are two. 
The first lies in the “ sunken forest" of the lower Waikato. This we find 
at a distance of forty-five or fifty miles from the sea, and there are the 
remains of an ancient forest, the trunks of whose trees are standing as they 
grew. The tops of the stumps reach to about mean summer water, and 
stand about two feet above its lowest level. Hard and dangerous the river 
captains find them, and much labour has been expended in cutting and 
mending channels for the navigation. These trees never grew in the water. 
They are of kinds well-known to us as the general forest trees of the present 
day. The specimen shown is from a ** snag " which lately sunk the steamer 
« Waipa.” It is kauri, but nearly all the larger trees now known are 
also to be found as snags or in positions where their roots are of 
a certainty far below the level of high water in the ocean. And this 
forest may have been on an upland plateau, may have crowned the summit 
of a hill; nothing can with certainty indicate, but the fact remains that this 
forest was submerged, cut off by fire or decay at the level of the water, and 
buried under about six feet of pumice “sand, through which the broad river 
now ftows. It has at present a tendency to cut into the eastern bank, and 
in so doing continually unearths other stumps in every way alike to those 
now standing in the river. 
The other proof of subsidence now submitted was discovered only a few 
weeks ago in sinking cylinders forming the piers of the Waikato Bridge at 
Ngaruawahia, sixty miles from the sea. The bed of the river there is 
pumice sand and gravel. A stratum of hard sandy clay underlies this, 
dipping to the south. Below this is a hard and compact bed of shingle and 
coarse green-sand without a trace of pumice. The cylinders were sunk 
into this shingle by the pneumatic system, and reach several feet below 
extreme low water in Auckland Harbour. It was found to be composed of 
fragments of clay-slate rock waterworn, but only to the extent of smoothing 
and well-rounding the corners. On examining Dr. Hochstetter’s geological 
map, we find in the Waikato Valley above this place no indication of such 
rock nearer than the Kaimanawa Range south of Taupo. But much more 
adjacent, in the Waipa Valley, Hakarimata Range, lying parallel to and 
westward of the river, is marked as composed of clay-slates, and it is 
possible that these stones were torn from the ravines of that range and 
deposited in the river-bed, which must then have been far above the sea- 
level. To what depth this shingle deposit extends is not likely to be soon 
known. It was explored only so far as was necessary to determine its 
suitability, in nature and position, to carry the bridge. It may have been 
a mountain torrent high up in a continental range. The subsidence may 
