Geological Survey of Canterbury. 17 



until heavy falls of snow at the end of July, which made geological 

 investigations impossible, drove me back to Christchurch. During 

 that journey I opened up a seam of coal, in the valley of the 

 Kowai, three feet and a-half thick. It consisted of a fine ex- 

 cellent black (altered) coal, the discovery of which was considered of 

 such importance, that the late Mr. James Burnett, of Kelson, a 

 competent mining surveyor, and who had been my assistant in my 

 Kelson explorations, was entrusted with the necessary preliminary 

 work to open up the seam and look for others. This gentleman began 

 the work on October 4th, but could not finish it, as he had to return to 

 Kelson ; I, therefore, continued it at the beginning of November 

 employing several miners, and driving an adit through the whole beds 

 until the older rocks were reached. This investigation proved that we 

 had been opening up the outcropping end or edge of a series of coal 

 seams, where the seams are not of such regularity as we may expect 

 to find them toward the middle portion. I therefore recommended 

 that borings should be undertaken towards the centre of the valley, 

 which stretches between the Mount Torlesse range and Russell's hills. 

 After this work was completed, and I had reported its principal 

 results to the Provincial Government, I proceeded with a geological 

 examination of the mountain ranges in the neighbourhood, including 

 Mount Torlesse and the Thirteen Mile Bush range ; during which I 

 also surveyed the small outlier with Brown coal seams, situated at the 

 head of the MacFarlane stream, one of the source branches of the Kowai* 

 The result of this survey of the district proved that these ranges, as 

 well as all the higher portion of the Malvern Hills, are built up by the 

 same old sedimentary rocks, which I had first met in this Island be- 

 tween the Awatere and Waiau rivers in the Province of Marlborough, 

 and of which also all the ranges to near the summit of the Southern 

 Alps along the course and up to the source of the Eangitata and 

 Ashburton rivers, previously examined, consist. During careful 

 detail examinations I made of these deposits of enormous thickness? 

 I followed some of the large flexures into which they were bent, and 

 found that in some spots they had actually been inverted, so that the 

 lower beds appeared to be the upper ones. Generally the dip of the 

 great anticlinal and synclinal curves is very steep, if not vertical, which 

 gives to the high rocky ranges quite a ribboned appearance. On the 

 summit of these ranges and on the moving debris slopes on 

 their sides, I made a very rich harvest of particularly interesting 

 plants, and when I mention that on Mount Torlesse alone I collected 

 over two hundred flowering plants, of which over thirty were new to 



