412 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Mar. 23, 
a different Crocodilian, which had frequented the shores of the ancient 
estuary and, so far as my imperfect acquaintance with the subject 
enabled me to judge, appeared to belong to a species of Z’eleosaurus 
which had stood much higher off the ground than any hitherto 
figured. Considerable quantities of coprolites were imbedded in one 
of the boulders found in the river-bed; and in a gully some three or 
four miles to the north-west (which had been so deeply excavated by 
the great floods of late years, especially of 1866*, as scarcely to be 
recognized, any more than the upper part of the larger tributary, by 
one who had not visited the district for many years) valuable addi- 
tions were made to the spoils. Here we were rewarded by finding a 
boulder with bones sticking out of it in all directions. It was intensely 
hard, however ; and the fossils were in a very friable condition, and 
broke to pieces when the stone was struck, however carefully. We 
collected the fragments and covered them with gelatine in the shape 
of liquid glue; and the specimens (very splendid ones) proved quite 
perfect, and, when joined together, scarcely showed the fractures. 
* The writer hopes to be able, in a future paper, to give exact details of 
the changes effected by the great storms which have within the last few years 
surprised the settlers in the Canterbury Province. ard afforded most striking 
evidence of the power of running water to accomplish what, without such demon- 
stration, most observers would probably deem it necessary to refer to the agency 
of ice. The great flood above referred to, descending sudden'y without apparent 
adequate cause, was attributed in one place to the giving way of the barrier 
of some g'acier-lake; in another district the astonished sett'ers, escaping from 
their submerged dwellings, imagined that a water-spout had burst over the 
lofty peaks of the inner ranges; but when the fact became known that the floods 
had extended throughout the country, from Nelson to Southland, it was p/ain 
that neither explanation sufficed. It is not difficult to account for such a 
débicle in the Middle Island, subject to such storms as that which occurred in 
the winter of 1867, when the snow lay on the plains to the depth of 6 feet, and 
the drifts obliterated valleys of 500 feet in the lower ranges, so that in one 
instance a surveying party passed over a gorge of fully that depth, without being 
aware of its existence until the following summer. ‘The accumulations of severe 
winters are exposed suddenly to the breath of the hot N.W. wind, which, 
rising up over the lower currents, passes across the intervening sea from 
Australia, and strikes upon the summits of the lofty Cordillera, and there 
rapidly melts the snows, and sweeps down upon the eastern pains with its dry 
scorching blasts, which, even in early spring raise the thermometer to 90° in the 
shade. Under such circumstances we may be prepared to witness even greater 
changes rapidly effected in the contour of the country, in which such remark- 
able memorials remain of the times when, under different cosmical influ- 
ences, the climate was more rainy, and the ghaciers (although still descending 
through noble forests to within a few hundred feet of the sea, upon a scale of 
almost unequalled grandeur) attained much vaster proportions, and other 
operations went on in proportionate magnitude. In Dr. Haast’s excellent paper 
upon the formation of the Canterbury plains, the enormous deposits of gravel 
and sand are described that compose this great tract of country, which, 
although seemingly a dead level, slopes on an average 30 feet in the mile 
to the sea. In such a region one can understand great changes of the surface 
taking place also gradually and unobserved, under the eyes of the inhabi- 
tants. A curious evidence of this was afforded by the discovery of a silver orna- 
ment, at the depth of 50 feet, in digging a well at Christchurch, which gave 
rise to surmises as to the Peruvian origin of the aborigines, until the article was 
recognized by a lady as having been lost by her ten years before, when her 
husband pitched his tent near the spot. 
