322 Transactions. — Geology. 



out to sea between the ice and the earth, bearing with it the hard gi'avels 

 drawn from the interior mountains, which would act as an abrading substance, 

 in the manner that emery polishes even steel. It is thus that we see the 

 Waitaki Downs levelled to their mathematical curves, but this only where the 

 glacial forces could have acted where the downs have been protected by the 

 position of the intervening Kurow Mountains ; there they remain in preser- 

 vation, and we see the lesson of the past as shown in the experience of the 

 present, when our antarctic voyager remarks, as already quoted, of South 

 Victoria mountains, that " the glaciers filled their intervening valleys, and 

 which descended from near the mountain summits, projected sevei-al miles into 

 the sea, and terminated in lofty, perpendicular clifis." Such, then, was the 

 face of nature on our shores, and such the action that formed our valleys and 

 stretched out our plains. South Victoria Land, our neighbour in the great 

 Pacific Ocean, is now undergoing the process of the gi'eat glacial action with 

 which we are done, and which I have feebly attempted to illustrate. There 

 now, at that short distance from us, is the glacial age ; ours has passed and 

 gone many hundreds of thousands of years ago, when our age was then, and 

 at that time — in the simple but sublime language above given — a glacier 611ed 

 the valley of the Waitaki, descending from the mountain summits, and 

 projecting several miles into the sea, terminated in lofty, perpendicular cliffs. 

 This wild scenery did not exist at the Waitaki alone, but was the character 

 common to all our valleys and our coast lines. 



Now, as the effects of glaciers have been apparent in our valleys, so will 

 they be seen also in our hills and ridges, scoring them o\it into angular 

 gutters and ravines, in the direction of least resistance, from the tops or water- 

 sheds, thus proving a strict adherence to the directions that bodies would take 

 impelled by their gravity, and, in so doing, wearing away or scoring out the 

 slopes, however hard their formations be, or however uncompliant their sti-ata 

 — this, of course, with modifications. On the table are some illustrations of 

 this action, supplied from the topographical surveys of the Province. Supposing 

 the lower hills and surfaces of the Province to have glaciers superimposed, 

 their effect could be no otherwise, for, as they melted annually during the 

 summer influence, the water would find its way between the ice and the earth, 

 and so gradually work out a channel to the valleys by its nearest and readiest 

 access. This done, as the first process, then, in time, would the overlying 

 congealed masses break up by fracturing on the edges of the ridges, and by 

 sliding down into the valleys assist disintegration of the surface by their 

 weight, and so enormously increase the erosion begun in the first place, in a 

 minute manner, by the water. Hence the furrowing of the hills and ranges 

 so remarkably general in this part of New Zealand. 



Having said so much, I may now proceed to terrace formations. The 



