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prevent acciimulations of suow, it will be sufficient in this paper to assume 

 the number of years during which this change was being effected, to have been 

 of sufficient duration to have deposited the beds of drift we are considering. 

 For a more gi-aphic description than I can give of the vast power exhibited 

 by the ice during this period, I must refer to the interesting work entitled 

 Frost and Fire. 



The wonderful jDower of ice I will not attempt to dilate upon or try to picture 

 further. I will now ask if it is not possible to reconcile it with the features 

 exhibited in the Queenstown, Dunstan, and Manuherikia Valleys, would the 

 ice and its accompanying waters there sweep over all the lower side in its 

 journey to its point of discharge — viz., the sea coast, and prevent in its 

 pressure all appearance of any terrace formation, form the rounded hills at 

 Queenstown, and what were formerly peaks of the Raggedy, Blackstone Hill, 

 Rough Ridge, and Rock and Pillar Peaks, into fantastic shapes, and cover 

 with its debris the lower spurs and convert them into rounded slopes, as we 

 find them in the immediate neighbourhood of the Taieri and sea coast. 



If I have carried you with me so far, I will ask you now, if there must not 

 have been old main glaciei"S or liver beds. Evidences exist in our midst of 

 the activity of ice at one time, and though I have not yet seen shoulders of 

 valleys and escarpments of rocks striated, I have found, in abundance, pieces 

 in the shape of striated stones detached from these points, both in Dunedin 

 and its suburbs, at the Peninsula, Green Island, and in a valley under Mount 

 Watkin, at Waikouaiti ; in each case on faces of elevation pointing up country. 

 Specimens found in Dunedin, at the back of the Acclimatization Society's 

 Grounds, are on the table before you. I will also direct your attention to the 

 specimens of light-coloured cements, which I chipped from blocks of vaiious 

 sizes weighing from sevei-al tons to a few pounds, and which ai-e to be seen 

 lying on the surface of the schist formations extending along the Ida Valley, 

 down the whole length of the valley of the River Molyneux from Cromwell to 

 Waitahuna and the Woolshed, at Tokomairiro. At Moa Flat they are a 

 considerable height up the ranges, and bear the appearance of having been but 

 lately deposited. The brown-coloured cement I have seen in the Shag Valley, 

 at Mount Watkin, and along the lower spurs of ranges at the West Taieri, in 

 addition to lai-ge accumulations at Waitahuna and the Woolshed. 



If we find signs of activity in the drift on our basins, as we traverse them 

 from Queenstown through Cromwell, Dunstan, and on to the Taieri, I think 

 we may fairly assume that we have what we desire, old river beds or deep 

 leads. In each of these basins, I fi.nd the drift in them in bands or stratified, 

 not lying promiscuously. Had the basins been each independent lakes, we 

 might have looked for greater evidences of stagnation in the drift -than I think 

 is shown at present. Supposing, for instance, I tip from a dray a load of 

 gravel, on cutting through it perpendicularly, no distinct pattern is observable ; 



