1867.] HAAST CAl^TERBUEY, NEW ZEALAND. 343 



on the eastern side of the dividing range are almost everywhere 

 covered. 



The western side of that important mountain-chain, called pro- 

 perly the Southern Alps, in this Province, was then not known to 

 me ; but I had the satisfaction of visiting that part of the country 

 last year, and of finding that the physical features confirmed in 

 many respects my former deductions, based upon my researches on 

 the opposite slopes. 



My notes on such an important subject would not be complete 

 did I not lay before the Society a short description of that interest- 

 ing region, where, perhaps more than anywhere else, the deposits 

 of the Glacial (or here perhaps better named glacier) epoch are de- 

 veloped on such a huge scale that even the morainic accumulations 

 on the eastern side sink into insignificance when compared to those 

 of the opposite slopes. Moreover any addition to the knowledge of 

 the Postpliocene beds in the southern hemisphere, deposited by 

 glacial or glacier action, and of the changes wrought by them in 

 the physical aspect of the country, will not be unwelcome to those 

 who are occupied in unravelling the nature of the deposits of the same 

 epoch in Europe and North America. All beds observed by me 

 hitherto are of subaerial glacier-origin ; and I have met with no de- 

 posits which might lead to the conclusion that they have been thrown 

 down from icebergs. As they form, as far as I have examined them 

 along the coast, bald and often vertical cliffs, sometimes several 

 hundred feet high, the arrangement of these beds, thrown down 

 along and in front of the Postpliocene glaciers, can be well studied. 



At the same time the character of the blocks of rocks which we 

 find imbedded in the smaller debris, gravel, and silt, gives us an 

 excellent insight into the working of these glaciers, and shows, more 

 than any reasoning by induction can do, the great triturating power 

 of huge ice-masses on the slopes and in the valleys of Alpine chains, 

 as well as the enormous power of ridge-making which they possess. 



II. Geological Stufcture of the Southern Alps. 



Before entering into a description of the beds under review, I 

 shaU offer a few notes on the geology of the Southern Alps in this 

 Province. 



The Southern Alps proper form the eastern wing of a huge anti- 

 chnal arrangement, of which the western portion has been greatly 

 destroyed, and submerged below the Pacific ocean. The axis of this 

 anticlinal consists of granites, which do not appear, however, in this 

 section, but which, more to the north, in the western part of the 

 Nelson Province, are still partly in existence, and are certainly of 

 early Secondary if not of Palaeozoic age. 



Younger granites of Secondary age appear in low wooded hills at 

 the western base of the central chain proper. They support on their 

 flanks semimetamorphic beds, mostly silky slates. In some localities 

 the latter seem to overlie unconformably the gneiss-granites — the 

 western base of the Southern Alps ; in others they appear to owe 



