Speicut.—Hanging Valleys of the Upper Rangitata Valley. 93 
directions across the strike, but their positions have been modified by the 
formation of structural basins and lines of tectonic weakness, so that 
there are departures from this general arrangement. However, in the 
upper reaches of the valleys the control of the grain of the country on the 
direction of the rivers appears more complete, so that there is a pronounced 
tendency for the tributaries and also the headwaters of the main rivers to 
develop their valleys along the strike of the beds, and especially along the 
strike of their weaker members. Thus it is that the heads of all the 
main rivers of central and northern Canterbury have an almost identical 
arrangement. The directions of the Waimakariri and its tributary the 
ite River are reproduced almost exactly in the Havelock and its 
of any sign of this whatsoever it is reasonable to conclude that if it occurs 
beneath the veneer of waste it must be very slight or it would show some- 
h as has been generally supposed. I do not mean by this that I 
consider glaciers incompetent to do so, but in the case of the Canterbury 
In the upper reaches, besides the chief tributaries, numerous smaller 
lley in perfect accordance, and associated with both 
| It is this association which is difficult to 
ifferential erosion in the main valley as 
compared with that in the tributary. If one tributary has had its lower 
reaches removed. and the floor of the main valley adjacent thereto lowered 
so that its junction is discordant, why has its neighbour, placed in an 
analogous position, not been similarly modified ? There is no difficulty, 
however, as far as this point is concerned with those valleys which have 
had their discordance reduced in post-glacial times. 
I might also say here that there is the entire absence of the development 
of the glacial stairway in the valleys of Canterbury, although they appear 
such a striking feature of the valleys of the European Alps and of other 
countries. There is nothing here analogous to the cascades in the floor 
of the Ticino Valley as described by Garwood (1909), or the breaks in the 
floors of the Alpine valleys with the paternoster lakes on the flat shelves 
as described by Nussbaum (1910). Even in the Sounds region, with one 
or two striking examples to the contrary, this feature is only occasional. 
