Report. 467 
be referred the beautiful white statuary marble and the dove-coloured “ forti- 
fication ” marble of Caswell Sound, on the west coast of Otago, which are 
now being placed in the market by a company that has been formed to work 
the quarries. The samples received in the Museum indicate it to be a 
marble of very superior quality for ornamental and building purposes. 
The geology of the southern part of the Provincial District of Wellington 
has also received further illustration in the shape of a number of metalli- 
ferous and rock specimens, including specimens of iron, manganese, lime- 
stone, serpentinous and eruptive rocks; and from Jenkins’ Hill, Nelson, 
another specimen of carbonate of iron, containing 40:8 per cent. of that 
metal, has been collected, thus adding another locality from which this 
valuable ore has been obtained. It occurs here under similar conditions to 
the ore of the same character previously described from Mr. Foote's colliery, 
at the Miranda Redoubt, and is associated with the coal measures. 
Paleontology.—The fossil collections made during the past year by the 
staff of the Geological Survey Department, have been both large and im- 
portant, and represent a great variety of formations ranging from recent 
times to Lower Silurian. 
In the North Island the principal collections have come from the Miocene 
and Cretaceous beds developed on the West Coast in the Mokau District, 
while from the East Coast small but important collections have been made. 
In the Napier District, Mr. M‘Kay succeeded in finding Ammonites in the 
chalk-marls of the Waipawa Gorge, thus confirming the Cretaceous age of 
the beds which had been previously assigned to them, chiefly on account of 
their mineral character. In the same district fresh-water deposits, con- 
taining fossils, were discovered on the banks of the Waipawa River; but it 
is yet uncertain whether these beds form part of the series underlying the 
Scinde Island beds, or were deposited in lakes, which were spread over the 
district after the last elevation of land in Pleistocene times. 
Farther south in the Provincial District of Wellington the chief collec- 
tions have been made from the tertiary beds which form high cliffs along 
the shore of Palliser Bay. The higher beds occurring in these cliffs contain 
Pleiocene fossils, and rest unconformably upon the Lower Miocene and Upper 
Eocene deposits below. 
The only other discovery of importance in the North Island i is the occur- 
rence of the Mount Torlesse Annelid at Karori, in the neighbourhood of 
Wellington, which fossil, although widely distributed in the South, had not 
hitherto been found in the North Island. 
The largest collections made during the past year come from the 
northern part of the Nelson province. From the Triassic rocks occurring 
at the Wairoa Gorge, and their south-west extension to Eighty-eight 
