478 Proceedings. 



they warp round the spurs of the hills at the same level — and that no 

 engineering power could form such level and extensive plains with their beds 

 of water-worn shingle but the ocean itself — that the singular fact that the 

 Hurunui and Canterbury plains are on the same level, is, in his opinion, an 

 iiTesistible proof of the correctness of his ^•iews. I need scarcely add that if 

 this view be correct there has been an elevation of the land of about 2000 

 feet 



Dr. Haast, on the other hand, assumes as sufficient for his views that 

 glaciers of enormous size have moved down from the mountain ranges, and 

 ploughed from the mountain sides the drift with which they have covered the 

 more insignificant hills and fonned the plains — that when the glacier outlets 

 ceased to flow and to deposit any more boulders and gravel, the rivers cut 

 through the deposits until they reached the harder rock on which the deposits 

 reposed. 



The necessities of this explanation require the admission that a glacial 

 period formerly existed in the southern hemisphere — such as is generally 

 admitted to have once existed in the northern hemisphere. 



The weak point of Haast's theory is, that it does not account for the 

 distribution of the drift so as to form regular plains. It seems to me 

 impossible to confound the irregular pell-mell deposition of glacial di-ift with 

 the evident stratification, through the agency of water, which exists in the 

 Canterbury plains. And I observe that Jukes, speaking of the glacial deposits 

 in the lowlands of Scotland and Ireland, and in the northern pails of 

 England, even as far south as the northern margin of the Thames Valley, 

 states that he has not the slighest doubt that they were stratified under the 

 sea, notwithstanding the absence of sea shells from the gi-eater part of them. 



Mr. Travel's objects to Dr. Haast's assumption of a glacial period, because 

 of its remarkable character, and because we have no evidence whatever that 

 such a change of climate as this supposes ever took place. Mr. Travers thinks 

 it more i^easonable to conclude that a great elevation of the South Island above 

 its present level would give a climate sufficiently cold. An elevation of the 

 South Island of about 4000 or 5000 feet would, in Mr. Travers' opinion, give 

 a climate quite as cold as that assumed for the glacial epoch. 



The exigencies of these theories i*equire either a change of climate to 

 something like the cold of Greenland, which would satisfy Dr. Haast's 

 requirements, or a gi*eat elevation of the land. Of course, when we use 

 imaijination in scientific mattere we have sometimes to draw libei*ally on 

 nature for supj^rt; and Mr. Travers' theory has an elasticity about it, for, if 

 we object to an elevation of 5000 feet as insufficient, we might double the 

 elevation without being uni'easonable. 



The strength of Captain Ilutton's views springs out of the fact that he 



