Canterbury and Westland. 243 



shows a rough stratification ; above and below, the rock has the usual 

 texture of gneiss. These lowest beds stand at a very high angle, 

 invariably dipping to the east. Yeins of granite, sometimes of a very 

 large grained texture, so that it even may be called giant granite, 

 pass through them. 



As before observed, the granitic axis is only exposed in "Westland* 

 the whole western wing of the anticlinal having disappeared. Excep- 

 tion must, however, be taken of a few localities, as, for instance, near 

 Lake Hall, south of the Paringa river, where gneiss granite and 

 gneissic beds dip at a high angle to the west of a granitic zone, so that 

 they may possibly be a remnant of the western wing. As we advance 

 towards the east, we find the eastern gneissic beds of great thickness, 

 overlaid by mica, chlorite, and other metamorphic schists of similar 

 origin, having, like the former, a high easterly dip. After four or five 

 miles, these rocks usually alter to clay slates, semi-crystalline sandstones, 

 and f elstones, which, although mostly confined to the western slopes of 

 the Southern Alps, in several instances form the divide, and e^ven reach 

 several miles across on to the eastern slopes of the central chain. They 

 generally contain auriferous quartz veins. Upon them now reposes the 

 great sandstone, conglomerate, clay-slate, and shale formation, of which 

 by far the greatest portion of the Province of Canterbury is formed, and 

 which, in many instances, can be followed without intermission for 

 more than seventy miles to the east. I have named this extensive 

 series of rocks, the Mount Torlesse formation. It forms, on the 

 eastern side of the great anticlinal under consideration, a succession of 

 huge folds, dipping throughout at high angles, but these folds are 

 so much destroyed during numberless ages, first by marine action, and 

 afterwards by sub-aerial causes of which the Great Grlacier period is 

 one of the most important, that at present the synclinals or troughs 

 generally form the summits of the mountains, whilst the deep and 

 broad valleys run often along the anticlinals or saddles. These beds, 

 of a thickness of at least 25,000 feet, have been formed during a 

 gradual depression of the sea bottom. A large island continent lying 

 to the east of New Zealand, of which a portion of the Chatham 

 Islands is a small remnant, being the country whence numerous rivers 

 brought the material in the form of boulders, pebbles, sand, and ooze, 

 into the ocean, and from which these beds were built up. During 

 their formation, a number of sub-marine eruptions took place, by 

 which diabasic ashes, and, in a few instances, diabasic streams, mela- 

 phyres, and amygdaloids were interstratified with them. These 

 diabasic ashes, and altered beds in connection with them, offer us a 



