Huttron.—On the Last Great Glacier Period in N. Z. 393 
But independently of all these reasons we find, I think, in the marks of 
former glaciation themselves strong evidence of a very ancient date. In 
Otago, about Lake Wakatipu, which is the only glacier region in New Zealand 
that I have had an opportunity of examining, the evidence of the former 
extension of the glaciers rests almost entirely on the presence of moraines and 
roches moutonnées, which are the most permanent marks that a retreating 
glacier leaves behind it. All the more perishable ones, such as blocs perchés 
and striz, are almost entirely absent. I searched in vain on some beautifully 
rounded surfaces of rock near Queenstown for striæ, but all had been 
obliterated by decomposition, and the only strie that Mr. J. McKerrow and 
myself could find were on a few loose boulders at the head of the lake. The 
absence of striæ, blocs perchés, and other well-known glacier marks, forms a 
remarkable contrast to what obtains in the Alps, North Wales, and the south- 
west of Ireland, all of which districts I have personally examined, and this 
alone would make me refer our glacier period to a time long antecedent to the 
glacial period of Europe. Striæ may be more common in other parts of New 
Zealand where the rocks are harder than they are in the South, but the 
absence of any descriptions of them in the reports of Dr. Hector and Dr. Haast, 
beyond general statements that such exist, makes me think that they must be 
far from common. 
I am therefore of opinion that the last great extension of our glaciers was in 
older-pliocene times, when the land stood far higher than it does now ; that 
the newer-pliocene was a period of subsidence, followed by elevation in the 
pleistocene period, and that that elevation is probably still going on. 
Notrz.—November, 1872. The fact that several species of birds and 
insects are different on the two islands of New Zealand would be considered 
by nearly all naturalists as a good proof that these islands have been separated 
longer than Great Britain from Europe, that is to say, previous to the 
pleistocene period ;* but an elevation of 500 feet would obliterate Cook Strait 
and join the two islands together, consequently New Zealand cannot have 
stood at an elevation 500 or 600 feet higher than at present since the pliocene 
period. We are, therefore, driven to adopt one of two suppositions, viz., 
either that the former extension of the glaciers was caused by an intense cold 
or glacial period, or by elevation of the land in pre-pleistocene times. — 
F: W.-H. 
* Godwin-Austen, ‘‘ Quar. Jour. Geo. Soc.,” VL, p. 94. 
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