DR. HECTOR ON THE GEOLOGY OF NEW ZEALAND. 53 



and also obtained this and many other fossils therefrom, and worked 

 out the geology of the district, I leave him to notice the geological 

 facts of the case. 



Note by Dr. Hector. 



The locality where both the specimens of this fossil were obtained 

 is a small bay on the exposed west coast of the South Island, where 

 the shelter of the Seal-rocks affords a precarious landing-place for 

 supplying stores to the gold-miners around Brighton. Northwards 

 the coast is formed of granite for many miles ; but the crystalline 

 rocks at this place disappear under Upper Mesozoic and Lower 

 Tertiary formations, which form the coast range, and^expand south- 

 wards to a width of 15 miles, covering the important area of the 

 Grey-Eiver Coal-field. 



The Seal-rocks belong to the upper part of the formations re- 

 ferred to, representing on the west coast the Ototara group of the 

 north-east of Otago Province, a formation which is widely distributed 

 throughout New Zealand, and nowhere, so far as I have seen, passes 

 into the Tertiary strata of later date. 



The Ototara group was referred to by Profs. E. Forbes and Ru- 

 pert Jones*, who from fossils collected by Mr. Walter Mantell, 

 considered it to possess mixed characters of the Upper Cretaceous 

 and Eocene periods of Europe. 



In the same formation Prof. Huxley, from a single bone brought 

 also by Mr. Mantell, determined the former existence of a gigantic 

 Penguin {Palceeudyjptes antarcticusf) ; and it is worthy of remark 

 that not only have further remains of the skeleton of that bird been 

 obtained in the Calcareous Sandstone at Ototara, but that a large 

 part of a skeleton was extracted from the same stratum in the Seal- 

 rocks with the first-found specimen of the Crustacean under notice, 

 thus satisfactorily correlating the formations on the opposite sides of 

 the island J. Concerning the palaeontological value of these Penguin 

 remains Prof. Huxley makes the following important observations : — 



" Whatever be the precise age of the fossil, it is not a little re- 

 markable to find in strata of such antiquity the remains of a bird 

 the whole of whose congeners are at present absolutely confined to 

 the southern hemisphere, and therefore, in a broad sense, to the 

 same great distributional area. If the strata be of Pliocene age, 

 the fact is in accordance with the relations which have been observed 

 between the recent and Pliocene faunas of the Northern Hemisphere. 

 On the other hand, the little that is at present known respecting the 

 distribution of Birds in time is not inconsistent with the ascription 

 of a far higher antiquity to a genus as closely allied as Palceeudyptes 

 to those which now exist" (I. c. p. 675). 



The Ototara formation has, since the above was written, been ex- 

 amined in most distant parts of New Zealand ; and though it varies 

 in mineral aspect, it always maintains, at least in its upper part, the 



* Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc. toI. vi. p. 329, 1850. t Ibid. vol. xv. p. 672, 1859. 

 I Hector, Trans. New-Zeal. Inst. vol. iv. p. 341. 



