414 Transactions. — Geology. 



for our acceptance, ■which, so far as they are material for the purposes of my 

 own argument, may be briefly stated as follows : — 



1. That the Southern Island of New Zealand was repeatedly submerged 

 during the tertiary period. 



2. That its ultimate re-emergence took place at the close of that period, 

 and that it gradually assumed the appearance of "a high mountain chain, 

 plateau-like, but with depressions existing before the tertiaiy submergence, 

 which were then partly obliterated, running generally either on the junction 

 of two formations, on the lines of faults, or on the break of bold anticlinal 

 folds." So far as I can comprehend all this, I assume it to mean, that the 

 re-emerged land, limited in the first instance to the area of the present 

 mountain range, exhibited the aspect of a plain of marine denudation ; that 

 the surface irregularities which had existed prior to its latest submergence 

 had been partly obliterated by submarine denudation ; and that, as the land 

 rose en masse, it assumed the appearance of a flat-topped mountain range, 

 protected, in great measure, from ordinary terrestrial denudation by a pall of 

 perpetual snow extending to the water's edge. 



3. That, " looking to the insular and peculiar position of New Zealand, 

 the neves" (by which, I presume. Dr. Haast means mere accumulations of 

 snow, without the ordinary technical sense in which the word is used) "soon 

 attained an enormous extent, and considerably lowered the line of perpetual 

 snow." Leaving the first part of this proposition for future comment, I must 

 confess my inability to comprehend how accumulations of snow, however 

 enormous, can lower what is generally understood as the snow line, and it 

 becomes, in the present instance, the more difficult to comprehend, for, as we 

 have seen, Dr. Haast leads us to understand, by comparing his asserted 

 glaciation with that of Greenland^ etc., that the snow line at the time in 

 question was coincident with sea level. 



4. That as a result of the suggested elevation, and of the operation of the 

 so-called " causes" above quoted, the islands of New Zealand became involved, 

 in pleistocene times, in a glaciation similar to that which now invests Green- 

 land and the antarctic lands, or the inner Thibetan glacier region. 



5. That when the land of the South Island had risen so high as to reach 

 the line of perpetual snow, "the configuration of the area now forming" 

 (doubtless " occupied by") "the Canterbury plains would have been a broad 

 arm or channel of the sea, running along clifls of tertiary rocks from Timaru 

 to Double Corner, and surrounding Banks Peninsula as an island." 



It will, of course, be seen that this latter proposition conflicts in some 

 degree with those which pur))ort to define the character of the suggested 

 glaciation, as mentioned in the foregoing quotations from the report, for it 

 would seem to involve an implication that the " line of perpetual snow" stood 



