322 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Feb. 27, 



" The rivers that intersect the plain are generally rusliing torrents, 

 which have excavated deep channels ; they mostly terminate in a 

 lagoon, separated from the sea by beach : through this barrier of 

 shingle some of the streams periodically burst, but others always 

 discharge themselves by filtering through the bar. The water of a 

 river on whose bank we were encamped, and which was completely 

 blocked up by a dam of beach twenty feet high, fell two feet during 

 the night. 



'' The Waihora and some others of the lagoons are opened peri- 

 odically by the natives, for the purpose of capturing the fish vdth 

 which these waters abound. Numerous narrow trenches are cut, and 

 as the water gushes out, nets are spread, and eels, &c. caught as they 

 are carried doTSTi by the stream. A trench about two feet wide 

 will yield some hundreds of eels, three or four feet long, in a single 

 day. In a short time the rushing waters wear away the intervals, 

 unite the trenches, and scour away the entire barrier ; the lake ra- 

 pidly sinks to the sea-level, and leaves dry a tract from a quarter to 

 half a mile in breadth ; the tide then ebbs and flows into the bay, 

 till a southerly gale drifts in the sand and shingle, and the bay is 

 again converted into a lagoon. Each of the largest rivers has an 

 extensive denuded tract at its mouth, commencing a mile or two in- 

 land, and gradually widening towards the sea ; and this is intersected 

 by flood-channels. These triangular delta-like areas are boimded by 

 cliffs, and have evidently been produced by the wearing down of the 

 table-land nearly to the sea-level. 



" From Rakaia to Wakanui the water from the interior finds its way 

 through the gravel bed, and by undermining it, has formed along the 

 sea-board innumerable chasms and gullies, which are yearly increasing 

 in depth and length : the countr}^ here has no other drainage. Some 

 of these gulHes or subterranean courses are from one to two miles 

 long ; and it seems probable that many of the now open river-chan- 

 nels of the plain have originated in this manner. 



*' Scattered here and there in the immediate subsoil of these ex- 

 tensive plains, bones of the larger species of Moa have occasionally 

 been fomid : I could not ascertain that any had been observed in the 

 more ancient diluvial deposits ; but I believe that, sooner or later, the 

 swamps and river-beds will yield a rich harvest of these interesting 

 remains. 



" At about ten miles south of the Waiteruaiti the plain ends in the 

 undulating country of Timaru*. 



" The superficial deposits of Timaru are of the same nature as those 

 of the plains, and are superposed on a vesicular volcanic rock, which 



mutu there is coal in constant ignition, and that they are in the habit of procuring 

 fire from it when they travel that way. In the Chatham Islands a bed of burning 

 peat or lignite is also said to occur ; a native of Taumutu, who had seen it, said the 

 substance burning on the plain was very different." 



* '* About ten miles inland of Arowenua, the KdureJce — the only native quadru- 

 ped besides the field-rat in which we have any reasonable grounds for believing — 

 is said still to exist." My son gives a long account of the appearance and habits 

 of this unknown quadruped, derived from the most intelligent natives, but which 

 would be foreign to the present notice. — G. A. M. 



