Hector. — On Geological Structure of Canterbury Mountains. 339 



Measures of New South Wales being still undiscovered in New Zealand. 

 Dr. von Haast's Mount Torlesse formation must therefore, if it is palaeozoic, 

 be restricted as equivalent to the Maitai series. 



The circumstance which he notices that the fossiliferous beds of hia 

 Mount Torlesse formation {i.e. the Clent Hills beds) generally appear when 

 great denudation has taken place, and the many localities he cites 

 for these fossils, which we have every proof are really of mesozoic age, 

 even without the direct observations which have been made, would quite 

 justify the belief tbat over a very large area of the Canterbury dis- 

 trict lower mesozoic, and not only palaeozoic, rocks prevail at the surface. 

 Indeed the areas of the latter are becoming more and more restricted 

 as the structure of the country is worked out in detail. Except in 

 the typical section, near Nelson, of the Maitai series, where true Car- 

 boniferous Brachiopoda and corals have been found, it is unfortunately 

 almost devoid of fossils, a calcareous tubular body which has been 

 long known as the Mount Torlesse Annelid and obscure plant re- 

 mains being the only fossils that have yet been found out of the Nelson 

 District. These are, however, pretty common wherever the upper part of 

 the Maitai Series is exposed. From near Wellington in the North Island 

 there is no locality recorded until we reach the Ashley Gorge and Glentui, 

 but there is reason to believe that a large portion of the Seaward Kaikoura 

 Eange is composed of this formation. Following south we find the 

 characteristic tubular fossil in the south-eastern end of Mount Torlesse, Big 

 Ben Bange of the Malvern Hills, Mount Hutt, source of the Bangitata, 

 Mount Cook, and at Lake Ohou. On the western slopes we find it at Nelson, 

 Taipo Bange, south of the Teremakau, and in the glacier debris brought 

 down from the Alps between Hokitika and Okarita. The Maitai series 

 thus crops out along both sides of the Canterbury Alps, but both outcrops 

 are to the eastward of the only area of Lower Palaeozoic rocks which we 

 know in New Zealand. 



Without any attempt to pourtray the minor irregularities, the only 

 possible generalization of the geology of the country on such a small scale 

 map was to express it by a synclinal, and this view is supported to a 

 remarkable degree by the observations scattered through the geological 

 reports. No doubt changes in the map will be required in future, as the 

 examhiation of the country is proceeded with, just as they have been 

 required in the past. To cavil at such changes being made on the ground 

 that they seem to over-sensitive persons to have been " written only to 

 find fault," is to bar the progress of science. But it is not even a 

 change that is complained of in Dr. von Haast's paper, but only an ex- 

 pansion of our knowledge that had been quite anticipated by that author. 



