162 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 
the establishment of railway communication is the improvement of its archi- 
tecture. 
: Roofing Materials. 
When I began to collect data for these papers, I did not expect that 
anything would be said on this head further than to report that no good 
roofing materials had yet been discovered in Otago. 
I am glad to state that this blank in our resources has, within the last 
few months, been filled up by the discovery of a valuable deposit of slate in 
the Otepopo district. The existence of a seam in this locality has been the 
subject of rumour for some years, but it remained for Mr. Short, of the 
Land Office, to place the matter beyond doubt. He first discovered slate at 
Mount Domett, but, knowing that it was too remote to be worked to 
advantage, he traced the reef back towards the sea, and eventually found 
workable deposits on the Kauru stream and its tributaries, at which point 
the reef approaches nearest the coast and the settled districts. 
As stated in a former paper, roofing slate should be found in the 
Kakaunui or Silurian formation, which, according to Captain Hutton, exists 
in this province in two large zones, extending from east to west across the 
country ; that in the north begins at Otepopo, and terminates at the Hawea 
Lake ; it embraces the Kakaunui and Hawkdun Mountain ranges. The 
southern belt commences at Tapanui, and sweeps round by Athol and the 
head of Lake Wakatipu to the Forbes Mountains. A connection between 
these zones, along the eastern sea-board, can be traced, in isolated patches, 
at Waitahuna, Akatore, Otakia, and the Silver Peaks. 
Although this extensive tract of country is entirely slate, in the geologi- 
cal sense of the word, it does not follow that the supply of roofing material 
is proportionately great, for the conditions that seem necessary for the 
production of the slate of commerce do not occur frequently in the clay-slate 
formations of any country. 
The value of our slate deposits is very much enhanced by the fact that, 
80 far as can be judged, the product is infinitely superior to anything 
hitherto discovered in the other Australian colonies. _ 
The West Coast has been well prospected for slate by Mr. M‘Innes, @ 
practical quarryman, but he discovered nothing better than the hard coarse 
variety found at Preservation Inlet, specimens of which are in the Museum. 
