•548 CAPT. r. W. HTJTTOJS- ON THE CORHELATIONS OF THE 



Cretaceo-Tertiary 



4. Calcareous sandstone without glauconite grains. 



5. Loose grey or yellowish-brown sands ; 35 feet thick. 



Nos. 2 and 5 are much obscured by shingle-slips from the high 

 river-bank. 



The upper part of l^o. 3 is the principal horizon for fossils, 

 although they are also found in ISTo. 4. A list of the fossils obtained 

 by Mr. M^Kay is given in his Eeport, in which he remarks that " all 

 the shells and other fossils collected come from the highest of the 

 upper calcareous rocks (^o. 3). The overlying loose sands have 

 been removed from an area some 30 feet in length by 10 feet broad, 

 and on this surface a great number of the smaller shells &c. were 

 picked up. Collecting these, I next turned over a considerable 

 amount of the soft underlying rock, and in this I obtained many 

 species, which, in weathering out, suffered so much damage that, as 

 weathered specimens, they were not worth preserving. With the 

 exception of Lima Icevigata, the lower fossiliferous beds (jSTo. 4) 

 appear to differ mainly in the absence from them of many of the 

 forms found in the higher beds ; and the fossils in this lower part 

 of the calcareous rocks being difficult of extraction, I contented 

 myself with those more easily obtained from the higher beds " (1. c. 

 p. 80). In the Canterbury Museum, however, there are specimens 

 of Lima Icevigata from the glauconitic limestone (No. 3), and so it 

 seems that No. 4 has not a single fossil which is not found in No. 3. 

 Consequently there can be no palseontological reason for putting 

 these beds into different systems. 



Mr. McKay's reasons for dividing the beds are the following : — 

 He considers the lower sands (No. 5), from their appearance, to be 

 the same as certain sands in the Malvern Hills, which are striking 

 in the direction of the Curiosity-Shop, but are some four or five 

 miles distant. These sands in the Malvern Hills form the upper 

 part of the coal-measures, and are generally acknowledged to 

 belong to the Waipara System. Mr. M^'Kay then points out that the 

 sands in the Malvern Hills are covered by anamesites, which, 

 according to Dr. von Haast, are identical with anamesites inter- 

 bedded with the " Weka-pass limestone" at Timaru, 60 miles to the 

 south. "■ With this," he says, " the unavoidable conclusion as far 

 as the sandy beds are concerned, I cannot but agree, and am there- 

 fore bound to consider the lower sands at the Curiosity-Shop as 

 belonging to some part of the Cretaceo-Tertiary series" (I. c. p. 78). 

 The upper calcareous bed (No. 3) he considers, from its fossils, " to 

 belong to the ' Hutchinson' s-Quarry beds,' or the Mount-Brown 

 limestone, the higher beds of the section being referred to the 

 Pareora formation, which everywhere succeeds with apparent con- 

 formity." And so he advances to this conclusion : — " There is a 

 necessity for having an unconformity somewhere in this section, 

 since it cannot be supposed, with the evidence to the contrary which 

 has already been adduced, that the Pareora beds are conformable 



