336 Transactions. — Geology. 



Another curious statement is that of the Director,* that probably the 

 same rocks (Maitai or Mount Torlesse) continue to the west coast water- 

 shed, judging from the shingle in the Eakaia Eiver. Thus the information 

 conveyed to us in the geological map in the very same volume, which shows 

 a broad belt of mesozoic rocks on both sides of that river, is now put aside 

 simply on the casual observation of river shingle by one of the geological 

 surveyors. Thus there is no doubt tbat the director of the Geological 

 Survey himself is now inclined to abandon, at least as far as the country 

 near the Eakaia is concerned, his present mapping of a large belt of mesozoic 

 rocks between palaeozoic beds to the east and west of it. All I wish to con- 

 tend is that the attempted separation of our younger palaeozoic rocks into 

 two divisions according to their fossil contents is incorrect and not according 

 to the evidence in the field, as far at least as I was able to understand it. 

 Moreover, it would be a most remarkable and unique fact in palaeontology, 

 that we possess in New Zealand the same fossil fauna and flora that occur 

 interstratified with each other in the neighbouring continent of Australia, to 

 which either a Permian or Carboniferous age has been assigned, but which 

 with us, owing to the circumstances that hitherto they have not been found 

 together, are said by the Geological Survey of New Zealand to belong to two 

 distinct periods, the molluscs and saurian beds to the Permian and the plant 

 beds to the Upper Oolite period.! 



This, in the face of it, is evidently a hypothesis which can never be 

 sustained, the more so as the geological evidence in the field is against it, 

 notwithstanding all that has been written in its support by the director and 

 officers of the New Zealand Geological Survey. I might also show how 

 fallacious it is to support any sub-division of our young palaeozoic or old 

 mesozoic rocks, by asserting that there exist two series of reddish and purple 

 slates of different age, or by the presence or absence of cherts, which are 

 found from the east coast to the western watershed, but the object of this 

 paper is not to refute in all their bearings the statements contained in the 

 Eeports of the New Zealand Geological Survey, for which I have not the 

 time at my command and of which many seem apparently to have been 

 written only to find fault, year after year, with the work of other geologists, 

 who are no longer connected with that Survey. It is simply a protest 

 against the deductions arrived at by the New Zealand Geological Survey on 

 some of the most important points of our stratigraphical geology. If I were 

 to continue silent, it might be construed into my agreeing with the conclu- 

 sions published by that department. 



* Progress Eeport, p. xx., in that volume. 

 t Eeport of Geological Explorations during 1879-80, p. xxii. 



