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Wellington Philosophical Society. 429 
_ The President stated that the defect of the Taupo pumice soil as a pasture 
land is more a mechanical than a chemical one, and the thorough consolidation 
of the surface by the trampling of stock would greatly improve it. 
r. Travers said with reference to a statement that horses in the district 
feed on cotton-grass in absence of more nutritious food, that even where grass 
is abundant horses prefer that plant and eat it greedily. 
The President pointed out, with respect to the author’s statement that the 
occurrence of the pohutukawa and other littoral plants on the shores of Lake 
Tarawera affords direct evidence of the former incursion of the sea into the 
interior, that the fact of the plants thriving in inland positions proves that 
they are not exclusively maritime, and is therefore of no value as evidence on 
this point. . 
3. “On the Date of the Last Great Glacier Period in New Zealand, and 
the Formation of Lake Wakatipu,” by Capt. F. W. Hutton, F.G.S. (See 
Transactions, p. 384.) 
Mr. Travers explained that it was a mistake to quote him as saying that 
the glaciers are now over-riding their terminal moraines. He had mentioned 
to Capt. Hutton that he found signs of this having occurred at some former 
time in the Nelson mountains, but the glaciers had now entirely disappeared 
from that district. 
Mr. J. D. Enys considered that the author must have misunderstood the 
reports he quoted relative to the Canterbury plains. The fan-like shape of the 
surface, formed by deposits radiating from the gorges of the large rivers, had 
heen clearly proved by levelling, and was shown in the sections referred to. 
The President while appreciating the value of the paper as likely to 
maintain an interest in the subject, could not”agree with the conclusions 
arrived at further than attributing, as he had always done, the erosion of the 
alpine vallies and the rock-bound lake basins to the scooping of ice. The 
level at which the water of the sea or lakes now stands in these valleys is, 
however, quite a different question. He admitted that the former extension 
of the glaciers may have been greatest in the older-pliocene, and have 
continued through the pleistocene period, and that he was perhaps wrong in 
the manner in which he employed the latter term, as it is now frequently used 
for post-pliocene, and all but the most recent formations. That the area of the 
mountain tops above the snow line influenced the extension of the glaciers, 
irrespective of the geological epoch, is proved by the fact that the glaciers 
from Mount Cook at the present time descend to within 700 feet of the sea 
level. ` ; 
The Wakitipu Lake, he explained, occupies portions of two parallel 
vallies, connected by the middle arm, which intersects the backbone range of 
the district by a gorge, the sides of which are 6,000 feet above the bottom of 
