390 Transactions. — Geology. 



18G6, p. 256) describes extensive deposits of post-pliocene gravels and sands, 

 the materials of which " are all water-worn, and exhibit the common appear- 

 ance of river or beach shingle." These deposits attain an altitude of more than 

 2,000 feet above the sea ; tliej " are in no way cemented, very little inclined 

 in stratification, and in many places exhibit perpendicular sections several 

 hundred feet high ;" they can, therefore, hardly be due to river action.* 



The sandy beds at Wanganui contain about 10 per cent, of extinct shells, 

 and must, therefore be referred to the earlier part of the pleistocene period, 

 that is, the glacial epoch of Europe. I do not know to what height above the 

 sea they attain, but Dr. Hector states ("Cat. Col. Museum," 1870, p. 172) that 

 they are 100 feet thick at Wanganui. Raised beaches of pleistocene, or of 

 almost recent, age are found at Motanau, in Canterbury, and on the north-west 

 side of Cape Kidnappers, in Hawke Bay, but I do not know their altitude. 

 On the north-west side of Hicks Bay, near the East Cape, there is a very dis- 

 tinctly marked line of inland clifls ; and the same thing is seen in Cook 

 Strait, near Wellington. 



Besides all this evidence, Dr. Hector admits that recent raised beaches, 

 from 15 to 25 feet above the sea level, are found in places all round the coast. 



The objections which Dr. Hector raised, in his anniversary address to our 

 Society for this year, to a recent elevation of New Zealand, or rather the 

 reasons he adduced in favour of recent subsidence, are : — 



1. That vallies on the west coast of Otago, in the northern parts of New 

 Zealand, and in other places, are depressed far beneath the level to which they 

 could have been eroded, and that they are prolonged beneath the water level, 

 forming deep water inlets and harbours. I quite agree with Dr. Hector 

 that these vallies must have been eroded when the land stood far higher than 

 it does now ; but they afford no proof of a recent depression, for, as I have 

 already stated, we have unmistakable evidence in the eocene and miocene 

 tertiary rocks found far up some of them that they were formed in the earliest 

 tertiary times, and they no more prove recent subsidence in New Zealand than 

 similar fiords do in Norway, Tierra del Fuego, and the west coast of Scotland, 

 all of which are known to have risen during pleistocene times. 



2. That '"the low shelving and sandy parts of the coast have a heaped up 

 shore line, that appears as if encroaching on the alluvial deposits." I do not 

 know to what particular parts of the coast Dr. Hector alludes, but this appears 

 to me to be no evidence, either one way or the other, for if the conditions were 

 favourable for the formation of sand-dunes, they would appear to encroach on 

 the recent marine deposits, as they rose above high water-mark, in the same 

 way that they would be formed over alluvia] deposits when sinking. 



* Since writing the above I have examhied these beds and find that they are of prse- 

 glacier date, and consequently have nothing to do mth the present argument. — F.W.H. 



