Wellington Philosophical Society. 375 
two years, the summer snow has greatly diminished, and a corresponding 
diminution has taken place in the supply of ice at the terminal faces of many 
of the glaciers. Within the last few months a great change is reported to have 
taken place in the outline of the summit of Mount Cook, owing to a great 
avalanche having slipped from the ridge, which leaves a conspicuous gap in 
the formerly even, tent-like form of the apex. 
As I have stated that I agree in the main with Captain Hutton’s views 
respecting glacier action, I may be permitted to explain, without entering on a 
controversy, that I was the first to describe the formation of the Wakatipu 
Lake as a clearly-marked example of glacier erosion, in my report to the 
Provincial Government of Otago, in 1864; and that, at the same date, Mr. 
M‘Kerrow—to whom Captain Hutton attributes the idea, as if it was opposed 
to my views—reported that the problem of the manner by which these lakes 
had been formed still required solution, and made no allusion to any ice 
action having taken part in their formation. 
I must refer to the volume of geological reports for the progress which 
has been made during the past year in the survey of the country, and may 
state that the descriptive catalogues of fossils from the tertiary formations, and 
also an illustrated work on the fossil plants from the different coal-bearing 
formations, are now far advanced towards publication. The development of 
the wonderful Reptilian fauna in our upper secondary rocks will be 
communicated to the Society during this session. Already at least seven 
distinct forms have been worked out from the blocks of matrix collected at 
the Amuri Bluff and at the Waipara, and these gigantic Saurians will be sure 
to excite great interest in the study of the geological structure of this country, 
and, by exciting discussion at home, will indirectly attract attention to its 
mineral and other resources. 
The only papers contributed to the Institute on purely chemical subjects 
emanate, as usual, from Mr Skey. In them I find that the author has 
continued his researches into the formation of native gold, and he begins his 
description of the results of these by combating the idea that gold is 
precipitated from solution only by organic matter. He then proceeds to 
describe a method of producing alloys of gold with silver by a “wet 
process," and thereby removing one of the great objections which has been 
urged against the hydrothermic formation of auriferous veins. In these 
experiments the solutions and re-agents employed were precisely such as were 
known in lodes that traverse rock masses, and he therefore maintains that our 
native gold alloys, which are so largely developed on the Thames Goldfeld, 
have been produced by this method. Another paper by Mr. Skey is devoted 
to the discussion of the origin of large gold nuggets in drift formations ; and, 
by a series of experiments, has confirmed the view first hazarded by Mr. 
