332 Transactions. — Geology. 



Wairarapa^ and Oreti, whose outlets are advancing on the sea, being into deep 

 bays with shallow waters, will tend intermittently to diverge from their 

 channels. Hence, if the theory prove a correct one, there might be some 

 utility in the careful investigation of the curves of these rivers in regard to 

 their ordinary flood and glacial drift marks, i.e., their highest banks, which 

 would clearly display the points where the two first tend, in any measure, 

 to overflow the latter.* It is certain as noonday that nature always works 

 by law, and there can be no waste of human energy when it is expended in 

 the investigation of the course that law pursues. 



In conclusion, I may venture to state that the more we study these subjects 

 the more we will be convinced that nature as much abhors cataclysms and 

 sudden catastrophes as she is said to abhor a vacuum. Her changes are 

 gradual, and her operations, in changing from latitude to latitude, present 

 themselves to us merely as accelerations in one zone and retardations in 

 another. Thus, if the scoring out of the valleys by glaciers is in full force in 

 Victoria Land at the present day, such action, to all intents, has ceased 

 here. That the ceasing has been gradual, prolonged over hundreds of thousands 

 of years, I think will be a generally-received opinion ; so, also, will this be 

 accepted, that the commencing of the glacial age, with its prodigious over- 

 flowing and deadening influences, was also as prolonged. To living creatures 

 the change would come on so slowly as to be harmless and unobservable, and 

 what may now be the tendency of our climate could only be indicated by 

 rigidly scientific observations continued over a century. 



* Drainage and embanking operations will be under the same law, also the cutting 

 of sludge channels in mining. Here embankments should be as the parabola ; drains 

 and channel beds as the ellipse. In large works the money saved would be enormous 

 by the adherence to correct principle. 



