168 DR. C. T. TEECHMAXX OX [vol. Ixxili^ 



in his Maitai Series as Carboniferous and the Kaihiku, Oreti, 

 Wairoa, and Otapiri in the lower part of his Hokonui System as 

 Triassic. 



Prof. James Park^ in 1903 classed Hntton's Maitai Series as 

 Jm-assic. However, in 1910 ^ he changed his opinion, and said that 

 the evidence of the separation of the Te Anau from the Maitai 

 was far from satisfactory, classing the Maitai limestone as Car- 

 boniferous. He also identified the Kaihiku as Permian and the 

 Wairoa and Otapiri as Triassic, and included all the rocks from the 

 upjDer part of the Maitai to the top of the Jurassic in his Hokonui 

 Svstem. 



"Prof. Patrick Marshall 3 in 1911 included all the beds, from 

 Button's Maitai Series inclusive to the top of the Jurassic, in his- 

 Maitai System, and called them Trias-Jura, regarding them as a 

 conformable series. The inclusion in recent years of the Maitai 

 Series in the Trias- Jura or Juj-assic is due to the fact that, since the 

 survey of the Nelson area in 1878, no one had succeeded in finding 

 either the Palaeozoic fossils which occur in the Maitai Limestone of 

 the Wairoa Gorge, or the large prismatic Iiiocera/nus-like bivalves 

 which exist in the Maitai Argillites at Wooded Peak, 5 miles east 

 of Nelson and elsewhere. Fragments of this prismatic shell occur 

 also in the Maitai Limestone, and led to the assumption that the 

 rocks containing it were Jurassic. In the Nelson area the Trias- 

 is evidently separated from the Maitai Series which bounds it on 

 the east and south-east by a strike-fault or series of faults, and 

 the Maitai Series is undoubtedly of late Palaeozoic age, as the early 

 surveyors concluded."^ 



Hector's identification of many of the New Zealand Triassic 

 fossils with English Permian Zechstein forms led hmi to place the 

 Kaihiku and Oreti Series in the Permian, a conclusion which was 

 naturalh^ followed by his field- workers on the Surv^ey. He identified 

 three English Permian si^ecies out of a total of seventeen in the 

 Kaihiku, three out of seven in the Oreti, one out of fourteen in the 

 Wairoa, and four out of nineteen in the Otapiri. However, in 

 the Wairoa and Otapiri Series he records, in addition to his sup- 

 posed Permian forms, a number of Alpine Triassic fossils. The 

 following reasons seem to have caused Hector to class the Kaihiku 

 beds as Permian : — 



1 Bibliog-raphy, 40, p. 431. 2 Bibliography, 37, p. 51. 



^ Bibliograpliy, 22, p. 22. 



-* C. T. Trechmann, Geol. Mag. dec. 6, vol. iv (1917) pp. 53-64. Dr. J. A. 

 Thomson and I were so fortunate as to rediscover in 1915 the fossils in the 

 Maitai Limestone, and to obtain a few additional unrecorded forms from it : 

 thej^ are undonbtedlj^ of Permo-Carboniierous age. I also found the large pris- 

 matic bivalves in the Maitai Argillites at Wooded Peak, and have shown from 

 examination of the hinges that they are not Inoceramns, but are apparently 

 identical with Aphanain De Koninck of the Australian Permo-Carboniferous. 

 The Permo-Carboniferous of New Zealand differs from that of Australia 

 in being apparently entirely maiine, and in lacking a Glossopteris flora and 

 glacial beds. 



