Hood.— On the Hot Winds of Canterbury and IlatvJce Bay. Ill 



It was not so during the summer all over New Zealand. The dry blasts, 

 which left the Australian coast, ascended into a higher zone than usual, and 

 brought no rain to the western coast of the South Island, passing on over its 

 mountains until, saturated at last, thoy returned possibly as a south-east wind, 

 bringing rain to the eastern coasts in unwonted abundance. 



However this may be, the facts mentioned seem to bear very pertinently 

 upon the theory suggested by Dr. Hector, that to the elevation of the interior 

 of Australia is to be attributed the shrinking of the New Zealand <daciers. 



When the vast levels of that continent were submerged, the returning 



equatorial winds came loaded with a for greater weight of "that vast stream 



of molecules of water, each enveloped in its own shroud of electric vapour," 



upon the mountain chain of the great land, the back bone of which and little 



more remains. 



The soundings between New Zealand and the Chathams to the east 

 Norfolk Island and the Kermadec group to the north, are not very profound. 

 So when the cordillera stood at an average higher altitude of from 4 000 to 

 5,000 feet, as Mr. Travers says, the whole of that great area would be dryland, 

 and we have depicted to our imagination a grand country, intersected by 

 majestic rivers, in which such giant forms of life as the Dinornis can more 

 easily be conceived to have originated, than in the limited islands, where the 

 last of the race remained after all the vast changes of scene and climate durin 

 which they survived until the present century. 



With such a mighty engine as the equatorial current depositing its load 

 of moisture on the neves of these mountains there is no necessity for 

 seeking for other causes, evidences of which are not to be seen ; and to suppose 

 it necessary to assume that the same circumstances obtained in remote epochs 

 in the Australasian regions, as in the northern hemisphere; nor to conclude 

 that New Zealand at that era presented in any degree the desolate appearance 

 Dr. Haast supposes. 



The development of the glaciers under the cosmical influences proposed 

 would be quite sufficient to account for all the phenomena now so interesting 

 to geologists in the terraces of the river valleys and the lake basins 

 of the alpine regions, and the materials were then prepared afterwards to be 

 spread out by the rivers as the land gradually subsided on the Canterbury 

 Plains — a process still going on— the formation of which has been so graphi- 

 cally described by Dr. Haast. It is impossible for any one who has studied 

 his last report to speculate upon the possibility of these vast accumulations 

 being of marine origin, even although he may not have traversed the paved 

 plains of the Rangitata and Rakaia, and had an opportunity of observing the 

 form of the stones and gravel, nor have searched in vain for any fossil of 



or 



