336 Transactions.—Geology. 
Another curious statement is that of the Director,* that probably the 
same rocks (Maitai or Mount Torlesse) continue to the west coast water- 
shed, judging from the shingle in the Rakaia River. Thus the information 
conveyed to us in the geological map in the very same volume, which shows 
a broad belt of mesozoic rocks on both sides of that river, is now put aside 
simply on the casual observation of river shingle by one of the geological 
surveyors. Thus there is no doubt that the director of the Geological 
Survey himself is now inclined to abandon, at least as far as the country 
near the Rakaia is concerned, his present mapping of a large belt of mesozoie 
rocks between palæozoic beds to the east and west of it. All I wish to con- 
tend is that the attempted separation of our younger paleozoic rocks into 
two divisions according to their fossil contents is incorrect and not according 
to the evidence in the field, as far at least as I was able to understand it. 
Moreover, it would be a most remarkable and unique fact in paleontology, 
that we possess in New Zealand the same fossil fauna and flora that occur 
interstratified with each other in the neighbouring continent of Australia, to 
which either a Permian or Carboniferous age has been assigned, but which 
with us, owing to the circumstances that hitherto they have not been found 
together, are said by the Geological Survey of New Zealand to belong to two 
distinct periods, the molluses and saurian beds to the Permian and the plant 
beds to the Upper Oolite period.t 
This, in the face of it, is evidently a hypothesis which can never be 
sustained, the more so as the geological evidence in the field is against it, 
notwithstanding all that has been written in its support by the director and 
officers of the New Zealand Geological Survey. I might also show how 
fallacious it is to support any sub-division of our young paleozoic or old 
mesozoie rocks, by asserting that there exist two series of reddish and purple 
slates of different age, or by the presence or absence of cherts, which are 
found from the east coast to the western watershed, but the object of this 
paper is not to refute in all their bearings the statements contained in the 
Reports of the New Zealand Geological Survey, for which I have not the 
time at my command and of which many seem apparently to have been 
written only to find fault, year after year, with the work of other geologists, 
who are no longer connected with that Survey. It is simply a protest 
against the deductions arrived at by the New Zealand Geological Survey on 
some of the most important points of our stratigraphical geology. If I were 
to continue silent, it might be construed into my agreeing with the conclu- 
sions published by that department. 
* Progress Report, p. xx., in that volume. 
f Report of Geological Explorations during 1879-80, p. xxii. 
