36 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



see and measure. The land lias been submerged, but to wliat extent Ave 

 cannot tell. Tlie proofs of tliis subsidence we at present adduce are two. 

 The first lies in the " sunken forest" of the lower Waikato. This we find 

 at a distance of forty-five or fifty miles from the sea, and there are the 

 remains of an ancient forest, the trunks of whose trees are standing as they 

 grew. The tops of the stumps reach to about mean summer water, and 

 stand about two feet above its lowest level. Hard and dangerous the river 

 captains find them, and much labour has been expended in cutting and 

 mending channels for the navigation. These trees never grew in the water. 

 They are of kinds well-known to us as the general forest trees of the present 

 day. The sj)ecimen shown is from a " snag " which lately sunk the steamer 

 "Waipa." It is kauri, but nearly all the larger trees now known are 

 also to be found as snags or in positions where their roots are of 

 a certaint}^ far below the level of high water in the ocean. And this 

 forest may have been on an upland plateau, may have crowned the summit 

 of a hill ; nothing can with certainty indicate, but the fact remains that this 

 forest was submerged, cut off by fire or decay at the level of the water, and 

 buried under about six feet of pumice 'sand, through which the broad river 

 now flows. It has at present a tendency to cut into the eastern bank, and 

 in so doing continually unearths other stumps in every way alike to those 

 now standing in the river. 



The other proof of subsidence now submitted was discovered only a few 

 weeks ago in sinking cylinders forming the piers of the Waikato Bridge at 

 Ngaruawahia, sixty miles from the sea. The bed of the river there is 

 pumice sand and gravel. A stratum of hard sandy clay underlies this, 

 dipping to the south. Below this is a hard and compact bed of shingle and 

 coarse green-sand without a trace of pumice. The cyhnders were sunk 

 into this shingle by the pneumatic system, and reach several feet below 

 extreme low water in Auckland Harbour. It was found to be composed of 

 fragments of clay-slate rock waterworn, but only to the extent of smoothing 

 and well-rounding the corners. On examining Dr. Hochstetter's geological 

 map, we find in the AVaikato Valley above this j)lace no indication of such 

 rock nearer than the Ivaimanawa Eange south of Taupo. But much more 

 adjacent, in the Waipa Valley, Hakarimata Eange, lying parallel to and 

 westward of the river, is marked as composed of clay-slates, and it is 

 possible that these stones were torn from the ravines of that range and 

 deposited in the river-bed, which must then have been far above the sea- 

 level. To what depth this shingle deposit extends is not likely to be soon 

 known. It was explored only so far as was necessary to determine its 

 suitability, in nature and position, to carry the bridge. It may have been 

 a mountain torrent high up in a continental range. The subsidence may 



