540 New Zealand Institute. 



Pakawau. During January, February, and March he was engaged on an 

 examination of the Upper Buller District, between Kotoiti and the Maruia 

 Biver, in order to determine the extent of the coal measures hi this direc- 

 tion and the thickness and value of the coal. He reports that they occur 

 flanking the crystalline rocks which occur in Mount Murchison, and extend 

 from there along the western flanks of the Spencer Mountains as far as the 

 Matakitaki Biver, from which point foliated and talcose schists are found, 

 also flanked to the westward by coal measures. The coal measures occupy 

 the greater part of the area between the line indicated and the mouth of the 

 Matakitaki Biver, at Hampden, being thrown into several sharp anticlinal 

 and synclinal folds, lapping, at places, round bosses of granite ; the coal 

 seams hitherto discovered vary from 2 feet 6 inches to 4 feet in thickness, 

 and are of very superior quality. The upper beds of the coal measures 

 consist of heavy beds of conglomerate, on which rest marly beds, and it is 

 probably from this conglomerate that a large proportion of the gold in the 

 Mangles has been derived, and not from reefs in the vicinity. At the base 

 of the foliated and talcose schists in the Alfred Biver, Maruia, Mr. Cox 

 found white and blue crystalline limestones interstratified with blue 

 calcareous slates and carbon-schists, which resemble the Lower Devonian 

 beds at Beefton. During May Mr. Cox further examined the beds at the 

 Whau, Auckland, in order to see if any prospects existed of coal being 

 found there ; but reported that nothing fresh had been discovered and 

 there was no probability of coal being found. 



Mr. McKay was engaged on Museum work until November, when he 

 went to Oamaru, and was engaged until the latter end of December in 

 making a collection of rocks and fossils, which were to form the nucleus of 

 a museum at Oamaru, and examining the strata between there and the 

 eastern slopes of the Kakanui Mountains. He endeavoured to prove the 

 identity of the Shag Point and South Canterbury coal fields by means of 

 their fossils, but failed to trace them farther south than the Kakanui Biver. 

 He examined the chalk deposits at Cave Valley, and traced them south to 

 Kakanui, opposite Mahemo, where they alternate with beds of Ototara stone 

 and associated floes of basalt. Further south he examined the coal beds in 

 the neighbourhood of Otepopo and the eastern slopes of the Kakanui Banges 

 to the Kurow Biver, and determined the rocks there as belonging to the 

 Kakanui formation. Further west he examined the Otepopo slate quarries 

 on the boundary of the Te Anau series, and thence proceeded to Moeraki 

 and the district which has lately been bored, unsuccessfully, for coal, and 

 on the western section where these beds crop out no trace of coal could be 

 found. At Lyttelton he examined the deposits exposed in the cuttings for 

 the new dock, and determined them as true loess, the proof being found in 



