Crawrorp.—On the Old Lake system of New Zealand, 375 
surface, it strikes me that a large lake must have existed there before the 
days of Hercules, or of Agamemnon and the siege of Troy, and before the 
Peneus broke through the high ground between Olympus and Ossa. I may 
be mistaken in this idea, because I had not the time to visit the Vale of 
Tempe ; but it strikes me that the remarkable rocks on the summit of which 
the Monasteries of Meteores are built are probably the wrecks of a former 
rename — _— tise — was See off. 
yo. eater than that ‘ between 
Monmouth and Masodin.? 
Art. LIII.—On the Igneous Rocks of the Province e Wellington. 
By J. C. Crawrorp, F.G.S. 
[Read before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 21st August, 1875, and 29th 
January, 1876.] 
Tue voleanic group of Tongariro and Ruapehu, within which are situated 
the greatest volcanic mountains of the North Island, lies within the Pro- 
vince of Wellington, but it is not so much my intention to describe it as to 
call attention to the few scattered indications of trap dykes which are found 
in other parts of the Province. 
I am in hopes that, by calling the attention of observers to the direction 
in which to look, further discoveries may be made, for, as far as I know, 
not a single additional igneous rock has been found since those that I dis- 
covered as far back as the year 1861. 
Those which I found were not numerous, After several days’ canoe 
voyage up the Rangitikei River, I came to a bar composed of large igneous 
boulders over which the river ran in rapids. 
Icame to the conclusion at the time that these were carried boulders, 
as I could not trace the rock into or under the tertiary cliffs forming the 
river boundary, but in thinking over the matter afterwards, I do not see 
very clearly how these large boulders could have been carried there. I 
would therefore suggest a further investigation, to see whether an igneous 
dyke does or does not run across the country in that locality. The 
boulders, if I remember right, are composed of a very hard doleritic rock. 
In the valleys of the Upper Hutt, of the Waiohine, and of the Ruama- 
hunga, I have found boulders of a vesicular trap, the small vesicles filled 
with what I took to be carbonate of lime. 
As I found these boulders inside the gorges of the Hutt, of the Waio- 
hine, and the Ruamahunga, and therefore in a position where it would be 
