498 Proceedings. 



do with the Australian hot winds, but were due to the evolution of moisture 

 from winds passing over the Southern Alps. 



Dr. Hector said the paper just read touched on nearly every branch of the 

 physical geography of New Zealand, and opened a great variety of debatable 

 questions. Mr. Travers considered that Dr. Haast was wrong in the period 

 to which he attributed the glacial conditions, and also in the cause he 

 suggested for them. Agreeing with the author that vague assumptions were 

 unscientific, he had anxiously expected some definition of the meaning that he 

 attached to the terms pleistocene and pliocene, as in that lay the first gi'ound 

 of diflference with Dr. Haast. The former word was used by Sir Charles Lyell 

 for certain terrestrial or drift beds that are contemporaneous with newer 

 pliocene ; in fact, an extension back in time, in some localities, of post-tertiary 

 conditions. Owing to its frequent mis-application to merely post-pliocene 

 strata. Sir Charles recommended that the term should be dropped, but, if used 

 in its original and extended sense, he (Dr. Hector) thought it would be useful 

 to retain it, and it seemed to him that it would suit Mr. Travers' view, as he 

 understood him to hold that no great change in the fauna and flora of the 

 islands had taken place since the great glacier period. Apart from this verbal 

 consideration, he thought the evidence for classifying even our marine tertiary 

 strata did not, except as a matter of convenience, warrant our applying to them 

 terms that have definite meanings in the other hemisphere, where the geology 

 has been more fully worked out. With reference to Dr. Haast's opinions, the 

 report quoted from so largely was neither his first nor his last, and among 

 them were many views in variance with each other. He did not attach much 

 importance to this so long as the facts recorded were right, as speculations on 

 this and kindred subjects were only muffled echoes of discussion in the old 

 country, where opinions change like the fashions. The extensive citations just 

 made from Geikie's work on the " Great Ice Age " were a case in point. It 

 being a new work, was treated as final authority, but he thought that, even in 

 passages read, there were views that had already been disputed and modified. 

 Leaving the question of whether the glaciers were largest during an extended 

 pleistocene period, or were contemporaneous with pliocene marine deposits 

 elsewhere, which is Mr. Travers' view, as still open, he agreed with the 

 author's idea of the cause of the former great size of the glaciers, though not 

 requiring for his theory such an extreme degree of elevation of the land. He 

 had previously expressed his opinion that there must have been a greater 

 extent of land above the snow line, partly due to increased height, but also 

 due to the more massive form of the mountains before they liad been cut up 

 into valleys, ridges, and peaks, but that a third cause may be found in changes 

 in the physical geography of the surrounding region. The winds had been 

 described as blowing steadily from certain quarters which did not bring them 



