Hecror.—On Geological Structure of Canterbury Mountains. 839 
Measures of New South Wales being still undiscovered in New Zealand. 
Dr. von Haast’s Mount Torlesse formation must therefore, if it is palmozoio, 
be restricted as equivalent to the Maitai series. 
The circumstance which he notices that the fossiliferous beds of his 
Mount Torlesse formation (i.e. the Clent Hills beds) generally appear when 
great denudation has taken place, and the many localities he cites 
for these fossils, which we have every proof are really of mesozoic age, 
even without the direct observations which have been made, would quite 
justify the belief that over a very large area of the Canterbury dis- 
trict lower mesozoic, and not only paleozoic, rocks prevail at the surface. 
Indeed the areas of the latter are becoming more and more restricted 
as the structure of the country is worked out in detail Except in 
the typical section, near Nelson, of the Maitai series, where true Car- 
boniferous Brachiopoda and corals have been found, it is unfortunately 
almost devoid of fossils, a calcareous tubular body which has been 
long known as the Mount Torlesse Annelid and obscure plant re- 
mains being the only fossils that have yet been found out of the Nelson 
District. These are, however, pretty common wherever the upper part of 
the Maitai Series is exposed. From near Wellington in the North Island 
there is no locality recorded until we reach the Ashley Gorge and Glentui, 
but there is reason to believe that a large portion of the Seaward Kaikoura 
Range is composed of this formation. Following south we find the 
characteristic tubular fossil in the south-eastern end of Mount Torlesse, Big 
Ben Range of the Malvern Hills, Mount Hutt, source of the Rangitata, 
Mount Cook, and at Lake Ohou. On the western slopes we find it at Nelson, 
Taipo Range, south of the Teremakau, and in the glacier débris brought 
down from the Alps between Hokitika and Okarita. The Maitai series 
thus crops out along both sides of the Canterbury Alps, but both outcrops 
are to the eastward of the only area of Lower Paleozoic rocks which we 
know in New Zealand. 
Without any attempt to pourtray the minor irregularities, the only 
possible generalization of the geology of the country on such a small seale 
map was to express it by a synelinal and this view is supported to a 
remarkable degree by the observations scattered through the geological 
reports. No doubt changes in the map will be required in future, as the 
examination of the country is proceeded with, just as they have been 
required in the past. To cavil at such changes being made on the ground 
that they seem to over-sensitive persons to have been *' written only to 
find fault,” is to bar the progress of science. But it is not even à 
change that is complained of in Dr. von Haast’s paper, but only an ex- 
pansion of our knowledge that had been quite anticipated by that author. 
