334 Transactions.— Geology. 
South Africa a similar mixing of an apparently older marine fauna with a 
younger terrestrial flora has been observed, and that universally it has been 
admitted that the same explanation as that given for the coal fields in New 
South Wales has also to be applied to both those countries. 
Considering the same character and sequence of the rocks ovant 
both the shell and plant beds, I have always held that the facts observed 
in New South Wales should guide us in New Zealand, and consequently 
that the beds under review ought to be classified as young paleozoic. In 
the geological maps, issued by the director of the New Zealand Geological 
Survey in 1869 and 1873, this view was accepted, and consequently the 
whole of the eastern portion of the Southern Alps was so coloured. How- 
ever, since then the director himself, as well as the officers of the Geological 
Survey, have visited and revisited that portion of the eolony with the 
result that the experience gained in New South Wales has been put aside or 
ignored, and that beds not only having the same lithologieal charaeter, but 
situated in the same horizon, have now been divided solely according to 
their fossil contents, thus creating such an utter confusion that it will take 
years of hard work to put matters right again. 
Thus instead of the eastern sides of the Southern Alps forming one 
wing of the great anticlinal, a synclinal arrangement has been given to the 
series of beds, a broad zone of mesozoie rocks forming the central portion 
lying between Mount Torlesse and Mount Hutt on the one side and the 
higher portion of the central chain on the other side which have been put 
down as paleozoic, thus reversing the facts, which examination in the field 
and experience elsewhere have taught us to be correct. 
It would be quite impossible to pass in review the whole of the publiea- 
lions of the Geologieal Survey upon which these conclusions have been 
based; but a few observations in further explanation of the points at issue 
may not be amiss. Since the Clent Hills plant beds were discovered by me, 
further localities have been found at Mount Harper, in the Malvern Hills 
on both sides of the Selwyn, in the Taylor Stream, in the Mount Hutt 
Range, in the high Mount Somers Range, near the foot of the high ranges 
east of Lake Coleridge, near the Coleridge Pass, and some few other locali- 
ties. In faet they generally appear where great denudation has taken 
place, and thus the lowest strata of the formation under review have be- 
come exposed; but now for a number of years this unmistakable position 
has invariably been explained by the officers of the Geological Survey, by 
their assertion that these plant beds were lying either above or against the ` 
strata containing the marine shell beds, or they simply denied the facts, 
against all evidence brought forward.* 
* See amongst other instances Geological Survey Reports, 1879-80, p. 106. 
