166 DE. C. T. TKECHMANJS" ON [vol. Ixxiii, 



Zealand has revealed the wide extension of the Triassic rocks, and 

 their stratigraphical and tectonic features have in many areas been 

 more or less satisfactorily worked out. 



Sir James Hector ^ published from time to time lists of the 

 fossils which the officers of the Survey had collected. His lists 

 were not accompanied by figures or descriptions, and those from 

 the beds with which the present paper deals were mostly names of 

 well-known European Permian and Triassic forms. He paid, how- 

 ever, a closer attention to belemnites and brachiopods, and established 

 three subgenera of the latter : namely, Bastelligera, Fsioidea, and 

 Clavigera, based upon descriptions unaccompanied by figures.^ He 

 caused plates illustrative of these groups to be i^rinted, apparently 

 intending them to accompan}^ a longer paper which seems never 

 to have been written. These plates have recently been issued with 

 the First Palseontological Bulletin of the New Zealand Geological 

 Survey,^ and several of the fossils represented have been identified 

 in the Survey collections. Hector's three brachiopod subgenera 

 figure largely in the reports of his colleagues on the Survey ; but 

 their validity is not generally recognized outside New Zealand, nor 

 hj all geologists in that country. 



Little has been done since then towards an accurate determination 

 or description of the Triassic and Jurassic fossils, largely, no doubt, 

 owing to the lack in New Zealand of literature dealing with the 

 marine Trias of other regions. Prof. P. Marshall'^ in 1908 published 

 a, description with illustrations . of six species of cephalopods, three 

 from the Trias of the Hokonui Hills, and three from the Jura of 

 Kawhia. The paper attracted the attention of Gr. Boehm, the 

 specimens were sent to him, and the result of his examination 

 of them appeared in 1910.^ A selection of fossils from the old 

 Survey collections was sent to Boehm, but was returned unexamined, 

 owing to his death in 1910. 



My interest in the Trias of New Zealand commenced during the 

 British Association visit to Australasia in 1914, when I spent about 

 nine weeks in the country. I was there again in 1915 and 1916, 

 when I stayed three months, and again visited the chief Triassic 

 and other fossiliferous localities and made extensive collections. I 

 also had free access to the old Survey collections preserved in the 

 Wellington Museum, some boxes of which had never been opened 

 since they were collected over forty 3^ears ago. For this privilege 

 I am indebted to Dr. P. Gr. Morgan, the Director of the Survey, 

 and to Dr. J. Allan Thomson, the Curator of the Dominion 

 Museum. A number of selected specimens were sent to England 

 for me to examine. Prof. Marshall also kindly lent to me several 

 fossils which he had collected in the Triassic and other rocks. 



S2:)ecial attention was paid to the collection of casts and impressions 

 froin which gutta-percha squeezes could be made, and I have largely 



1 Bibliography, 15, Introduction, p. x. 



" Bibliograpli}^, 16. -^ Bibliography, 47, pis. i-v. . 



■^ Bibliography, 25. ^ Bibliography, 7. 



