W. Travers.—On Extinct Glaciers in: the South Island. 303 
greater differences exist between their respective flora and fauna than exist 
between those of England and the continent of Europe, the connection between 
which was only severed in pleistocene times, It will at once be seen by those 
who have had an opportunity of perusing Dr. Haast’s elaborate report on the 
Canterbury plains (presented to the Provincial Government of Canterbury in 
September, 1864), that the views contained in the foregoing brief sketch are 
altogether at variance with those which he there propounded in reference to 
what he has termed * the pleistocene glaciation of New Zealand.” 
Whilst giving reasons for his belief that the southern island of New 
Zealand has never been higher than it is at present, he nevertheless asserts 
that it was subjected, in earlier pleistocene times, to a general glaciation 
analogous to that of Greenland. His words are: “It is not necessary to give 
a picture of the desolate aspect of the country in those pleistocene times ; but 
when reading the descriptions of Dr. Kane, of Greenland, and of other arctic 
and antarctic explorers, it brought visibly before my mind that this island 
during that era would have presented a very similar appearance.” He, how- 
ever, adduces no evidence whatsoever in support of this statement, nor does he 
attempt to account for the suggested glaciation otherwise than by a loose 
assertion “that the climate had changed by some physical causes, and assumed 
an antarctic character." For my own part I have never seen—at least in 
those portions of the South Island mountains which I have personally visited 
—the slightest evidence which could support such a statement, or which would 
have led me to the belief that, even during the greatest elevation of the land 
of which any indication remains, it presented features of glaciation differing 
(except in such degree as would naturally follow in this latitude) from those 
which it now presents where glaciers of the first order still exist. 
In this connection the following extracts from the Duke of Argyll’s 
address (in February of this year), as President of the Geological Society of 
London, have a distinct application to the existing physical features of the 
Middle Island mountains. His Grace says :—^ If I may judge from a paper 
lately contributed by Professor Ramsay to ‘ Macmillan’s Magazine,’ upon the 
valley of the Po, and from the recent discussion on Mr. J. F. Campbell’s very 
interesting paper on the glaciation of Iceland, it seems to be admitted by 
Professor Ramsay that no larger amount of work can be assigned to the 
glaciers of the glacial epoch than that of greatly deepening the valleys which 
existed before. If this be admitted, then the question of the effects of glacial 
denudation in determining the existing configuration of the surface of the 
earth becomes a comparatively narrow question. The existence of a glacial 
epoch, at least over a large part of the Northern Hemisphere, which, in its 
coming, its duration, and its passing away, has been the latest in the great 
agencies of change, is perhaps one of the most firmly established doctrines of 
