312 Transactions. — Geology. 



Komiti Point ; and he makes no attempt to prove that the Orakei Bay beds 

 are of cretaceo-tertiary age. He certainly says that the Mercer beds, which 

 are generally thought to be the equivalents of the Waitemata series, " close 

 the sequence of rocks succeeding the cretaceo-tertiary coal formation;" but 

 this is a pure assumption unsupported by any evidence and abandoned by 

 Mr. Cox as disproved.* 



Mr. McKay also ignores altogether the opinion of the European palaeon- 

 tologists who have examined the fossils from Orakei Bay. Professor Bupert 

 Jones examined the Foraminifera, and thought that they indicated a late 

 tertiary period, f In the Palaeontology of the Voyage of the Novara Herr 

 Karrer says that these Foraminifera are probably of the same age as the 

 Vienna Basin — i.e. miocene, — and Dr. Stoliczka thinks that the Bryozoa 

 indicate a miocene or perhaps older pliocene age ; while Professor Martin 

 Duncan thinks that the Orakei Bay beds are probably the equivalents of the 

 Mount Gambier series of South Australia, which he calls middle cainozoic, } 

 and which are considered by all Australian geologists to be miocene. So 

 that four well-known palaeontologists all agree that these beds are not older 

 than miocene. 



The reason why the Orakei Bay beds were considered by the Geological 

 Survey to be of cretaceo-tertiary age is stated by Mr. Cox. He says it was 

 because Pecten zittelli and Pecten jischeri occurred in them ; and he further 

 Bays that "we have always considered P. zittelli to be a typical fossil in the 

 cretaceo-tertiary series — indeed, to be almost confined to the Leda marls ; 

 and now to find it associated with a large number of Pareora fossils is apt 

 to throw discredit on those fossils which we have considered as distinctive of 

 any special horizon. "§ But I am not aware that either of these species of 

 Pecten has ever been found associated with cretaceous fossils. Both were de- 

 scribed from rocks at Papakura, considered by Dr. Stache to be oligocene, and 

 by Dr. Zittel to be eocene. P. zittelli also occurs at Cape Kidnappers || in beds 

 acknowledged both by Dr. Hectorl 7 and by Mr. McKay** to be miocene, and 

 the finding of both species by Mr. Cox, in 1880, with acknowledged miocene 

 fossils at Komiti Point, proved decisively that neither species can be taken 

 as characteristic of cretaceo-tertiary rocks. 



But there is still another point altogether omitted in Mr. McKay's report. 

 If the " marly grits " containing Orakei Bay fossils at Komiti Point belong to 



* Beports of Geological Explorations, 1881, p. 36. 



t Quar. Jour.. Geol. Soc, xvi., p. 251 (1860). 



% Quar. Jour. Geol. Soc, xxvi., p. 316 (1870). 



§ Eeports of Geological Explorations, 1879-80, p. 17. 



|| Cat. Tertiary Mollusca of New Zealand, 1873, p. 32. 



U Eeports Geol. Exp., 1877-78, p. 190. 



** Rep. Geol. Exp., 1874-76, p. 49, and Rep. Geol. Exp., 1878-79, p. 70. 



