430 Proceedings. 



the lake. It could not have been formed by a single continuous scooping 

 process in the present line of the lake, as if a depression had not otherwise 

 existed the upper part of the glacier would have continued its excavation 

 towards the Te Anau Lake, in which direction there is a low saddle. The 

 soundings of the lake, which is fifty miles long, were taken in 1863 under 

 his instructions by Mr. Hacket, and showed that the bottom is flat from side 

 to side, and has an average fail of twelve feet in the mile from both ends 

 towards the middle arm, where the bottom of the lake is 300 feet below the 

 sea-level. The resemblance to the sounds on the west is complete, yet they 

 are only forty miles distant, and are cut to more than 1,800 feet beneath the 

 sea-level, and in hard granite instead of the soft crumbling schists that are 

 found round the Wakitipu. To explain this fact inequality of subsidence is 

 certainly necessary ; moreover, the occurrence of marine tertiary limestone on 

 the shore of the lake inclined at 50°, and risiug to considerable altitudes in 

 the mountains, indicates movements in the rock masses of the district that 

 must have contributed to determine the direction of the vallies. 



The President supported Mr. Enys regarding the reports on the Canterbury 

 plains by Dr. Haast and Mr. Doyne, and from his o\vn knowledge said that 

 nothing was more clearly established than the regularly curved contoui'^ of 

 surface deposits concentric to the points where the great rivers emerge from 

 the mountains. The existence of the terraces bounding the rivers as they 

 cross the plains to the sea, he explained as being due to the gradual erosion 

 of a notch in a rocky barrier where they leave the mountains, so that the 

 river flows at a lower level, and cuts through its earlier formed alluvium. So 

 far as the district of the Kakaia is concerned, the statement that the gravel 

 formation wraps round the sjDurs of the hills at one uniform level is certainly 

 not correct. On the whole, he thought no proof had been advanced of any 

 submergence beneath the sea of the alpine districts since the last excavation 

 of the great vallies by the glaciers. After quoting Sir Charles Lyell, who 

 points out that the time required for similar excavation is so extensive that 

 it covers a period during which we know that greater oscillations of level 

 have taken place than are required to account for such inequalities, the 

 President drew attention to the irregularity in the movement of the land 

 during the earthquakes of 1848 and 1855, which amounted to nine feet 

 elevation at Palliser Bay and was not perceptible at Porirua, while there is 

 good reason to believe that in Blind Bay there was a marked depression. The 

 elevation of the Bally Bock in Wellington harbour and the depression of the 

 Hapukii Rock at the Astrolabe in Blind Bay, since the publication of the 

 Admiralty charts, was also advanced as evidence that unequal movements 

 have taken place on a small scale, and of course such may be cumulative 

 throughout long periods. 



