322 T'ransactions.— Geology. 
out to sea between the ice and the earth, bearing with it the hard gravels 
drawn from the interior mountains, which would act as an abrading substance, 
in the manner that emery polishes even steel It is thus that we see the 
Waitaki Downs levelled to their mathematical curves, but this only where the 
glacial forces could have acted where the downs have been protected by the 
_ position of the intervening Kurow Mountains; there they remain in preser- 
vation, and we see the lesson of the past as shown in the experience of the 
present, when our antarctic voyager remarks, as already quoted, of South 
Victoria mountains, that “the glaciers filled their intervening valleys, and 
which descended from near the mountain summits, projected several miles into 
the sea, and terminated in lofty, perpendicular cliffs.” Such, then, was the 
face of nature on our shores, and such the action that formed our valleys and 
stretched out our plains. South Victoria Land, our neighbour in the great 
Pacific Ocean, is now undergoing the process of the great glacial action with 
which we are done, and which I have feebly attempted to illustrate. There 
now, at that short distance from us, is the glacial age ; ours has passed and 
gone many hundreds of thousands of years ago, when our age was then, and : 
at that time—in the simple but sublime language above given—a glacier filled 
the valley of the Waitaki, descending from the mountain summits, and 
projecting several miles into the sea, terminated in lofty, perpendicular cliffs, 
This wild scenery did not exist at the Waitaki alone, but was the character 
common to all our valleys and our coast lines, 
Now, as the effects of glaciers have been apparent in our valleys, so will 
they be seen also in our bills and ridges, scoring them out into angular 
gntters and ravines, in the direction of least resistance, from the tops or water- 
sheds, thus proving a strict adherence to the directions that bodies would take 
impelled by their gravity, and, in so doing, wearing away or scoring out the 
slopes, however hard their formations be, or however uncompliant their strata 
—this, of course, with modifications. On the table are some illustrations of 
this action, supplied from the topographical surveys of the Province. Supposing 
the lower hills and surfaces of the Province to have glaciers superimposed, 
their effect could be no otherwise, for, as they melted annually during the 
summer influence, the water would find its way between the ice and the earth, 
and so gradually work out a channel to the valleys by its nearest and readiest 
access, This done, as the first process, then, in time, would the overlying 
congealed masses break up by fracturing on the edges of the ridges, and by 
sliding down into the valleys assist disintegration of the surface by their 
weight, and so enormously increase the erosion begun in the first place, in a 
minute manner, by the water. Hence the furrowing of t 
so remarkably general in this part of New Zealand. 
Having said so much, I may now proceed to terrace. formations, The 
he hills and ranges 
