Frenp.— Notes on some Ancient Aboriginal Caches near Wanganui. 221 
onward march of the sand, such surface always consists of the bare clay, 
with a few dried-up roots of fern, etc., traversing it. Ancient forests, with 
some of the trunks of the trees lying prostrate, and all their stumps stand- 
ing erect, though broken off eighteen inches to three feet above the root, occur 
at three different levels, viz., at about 20 feet, 70 feet, and 120 feet above 
high-water mark: and even the highest of these has been submerged, and 
covered to a depth of several feet with marine deposit. Owing to the route 
along the base of the cliffs being only practicable during so short a portion 
of the tide, and my not having been along it for many years, I cannot say 
whether these forest layers show in any place one above the other, and thus 
indicate separate periods of depression and upheaval, or whether they may 
have merely grown on terraces of different heights, and been all submerged 
at one time; but I may note, that while the lowest layer consists of mixed 
timber of moderate size, the second seems to be exclusively of manuka trees 
which cannot have exceeded six inches to eight inches in diameter, and appear 
to have been of serubby growth, and the top one contains the butts of large 
Ratas and Totaras, such as could not now be found for many miles inland. 
These large trees in the top layer of forest have also, in many instances, 
evidently been destroyed by fire, but no trace of similar destruction has, so 
far as I know, been observed in the case of either of the lower layers. From 
having had, during the last 26 years, continued opportunities of noticing the 
appearance of stumps of trees which have been killed by fire, I am satis- 
fied that the charred condition of the stumps in this upper layer of forest is 
the result of fires lighted while the trees were alive, though whether by human 
agency it is impossible to say with any certainty. My own impression is 
that these trees were burned by human beings: because had the forest been 
set on fire through volcanic action, I think the whole, and not merely de- 
tached large trees here and there, would have shown the fiery traces. And 
had the fires been kindled in the stumps, when they were exposed after 
upheaval, their partially rotted condition would probably have caused 
them to be utterly consumed, and at all events the earthy matter 
with which they are impregnated would have caused them to burn 
with a red ash, which always remains distinctly visible for very length- 
ened periods where swamp or sunken timber has been the material of 
a fire. I have noted the above particulars because they will serve to make 
the following more intelligible ; and may further add that from the mouth 
of the Wanganui river to that of the Omapu stream, a distance of about 
five and a-half miles, there is not a single brook or watercourse flowing into 
the sea, though numerous springs ooze out on the beach, or trickle out of 
the face of the cliffs. 
To come, however, to the immediate subject of this paper, it is right that 
