V. — GEOLOGY. 



Art. LXVIII. — Notes on Dr. Uaast 



New Zealand. By W. T. L. Travers, F.L.S. 



[Bead before the Wellington Philosophical Society, 15th August, 1874.] 



of 



Iff the course of the last year's proceedings of this Society I had the honour 

 of submitting to it some observations upon the remains of extensive but now 

 extinct glaciers, which occur in the principal valleys of the great mountain 

 range of the South Island, in which I attributed the origin and subsequent 

 disappearance of the glaciers which have left these evidences of their former 

 existence, to oscillations in the level of the land. As I then pointed out, the 

 views embodied in my paper differ materially from those propounded by 

 Dr. Haast, on the same subject, in a report to the Provincial Government of 

 Canterbury in 1864 j but as he has lately reasserted the views contained in 

 that report in their entirety, I propose now to examine them at some length, 

 in order to show, more fully than I attempted to do in my last paper, the 

 grounds upon which I differ with him ; and I do this the less unwillingly, 

 because, in the first place, Dr. Haast has challenged criticism, and because, in 

 the next place, the right determination of the question at issue between us is 

 of considerable importance in connection with our enquiries into the existing 

 physical features of these islands. 



My own views, as stated in my paper of last year, are, — That at the close 

 of the miocene period the South Island generally began to rise, and that its 

 central mountain chain ultimately attained an elevation exceeding its present 

 altitude above sea level by some 4000 or 5000 feet. That during the period 

 of maximum elevation all the main valleys in this central range were occupied 

 by glaciers, each of which was, roughly speaking, proportionate in size to the 

 altitude of the mountains and to the extent of the drainage system in which 

 its own particular valley originated, and extended down its valley to a distance 







proportionate to its own mass. That this period of elevation was followed by 

 a depression to an extent which, probably, exceeded the maximum elevation 

 above mentioned. That, as a result of this depression, the glaciers occupying 

 valleys in those parts of the range which had not attained, during the period 

 of maximum elevation, a greater altitude than 13,000 to 14,000 feet above sea 

 level disappeared. And that although, in postpliocene times, there had been a 

 re-elevation of the land, during which the glaciers now existing in the valleys 

 radiating from Mount Cook again advanced, occupying, with slight variation, 



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