316 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Feb. 9, 
sooner or later the cainozoic deposits of New Zealand, which attain 
probably a greater magnitude in depth than those of Australia, will 
be found to render the establishment of a great southern series 
necessary. 
The Tertiaries of the North Island of New Zealand must be studied 
in relation to those of Australia. ‘The great development of ter- 
tiary limestone between the Rangetoto range and the west coast of 
the North Island of New Zealand requires careful examination, 
especially as regards its fossils. Its relation to the lignites of what 
Hochstetter has called the Auckland Tertiaries, has been satisfactorily 
determined ; and by a comparison of the fossils with those from the 
Cape-Otway series a sufficiently satisfactory equivalency might be 
established ; so that a local terminology could be agreed upon, without 
binding geologists to the inevitable results of the adoption of the 
Kuropean classification of the succession of deposits during the ter- 
tiary period. 
The polyzoan limestones of the North Island of New Zealand were 
probably the equivalents of the Mount-Gambier deep-water deposits. 
As yet no reef-building forms have been discovered in them. 
The equivalency of all the cainozoic deposits described and noticed 
in this communication is probably as follows. The lowest bed, No. 
1, 4 mile west of Cape Otway=the gravel- and boulder-deposit, and 
the old basalt of the inland valleys. Next in succession is No. 9, 
3 miles west of the river Gellibrand, and then No. 4, clay-bed near 
Cape Otway, with Trigonia semiundulata. Nos. 9 and 4=the 
Hamilton tertiaries, the Geelong and Murray beds, below the so- 
called coralline limestone (with hardly a coral in it, but plenty of 
Polyzoa). Polyzoan limestone of Mount Gambier=No. 3, near 
Cape Otway. It often becomes more sandy as it overlaps the infe- 
rior but really contemporaneous deposits. 
There are no neighbouring areas with whose strata these can be 
correlated. The tertiary formation of Java has been magnificently 
illustrated, so far as its corals and Echinodermata are concerned, by 
Reuss and Herklots ; but it was deposited under the conditions pecu- 
liar to a reef-area. The fossil corals were reef-building, and had 
the old-fashioned facies which is characteristic of the Australian 
fauna. 
The paleontology of the coral limestones of the coasts of the great 
islands to the east of New Holland is a blank; and even the great 
raised reefs of the Sandwich Islands have not been studied. The 
Caribbean tertiaries have hardly any thing in common with the Austra- 
lian, and were deposited in a reef-area. With these considerations 
and facts before us, the necessity for a critical examination of the 
New-Zealand Tertiaries becomes most urgent. 
At present all that can be arrived at concerning the relative posi- 
tion of the Australian fossiliferous Tertiaries and their physical geology 
may be quickly summed up. They were formed on a sea-bottom of 
the oldest rocks, in increasingly deep water, during a period when 
the denudation of the neighbouring coast-line to the east and north- 
east was rapid. They were very distant from the reef-area of the 
