Canterbury and Westland. 247 



them. The rising of the ground continuing, extensive beds of brown 

 coal were formed, accompanied by clays, shales, and clay ironstones, 

 after which the whole was again submerged below the sea level, and a 

 series of f ossilif erous beds formed, of which the exact age has not yet 

 been ascertained, notwithstanding the abundance of fossil remains con- 

 tained therein. The presence of Plesiosaurus and many other saurian 

 genera in the Waipara, would point to a young secondary (cretaceous) 

 age, whilst the character of the shells and the total absence of eepha- 

 lopods, such as ammonites and belemnites would compel us to assign to 

 them an old tertiary age. I have, therefore, in order not to make our 

 nomenclature more cumbrous, adopted Dr. Hector's somewhat vague 

 expression of cretaceo -tertiary for this formation. 



The country continued to sink gradually for a considerable time, 

 during which sands, more or less glauconitic or calcareous, were 

 deposited, the uppermost bed being in many localities a highly 

 calcareous glauconitic sandstone (known as the Weka Pass stone). 

 On the western side of the central chain, the Grey Coal Measures 

 and their accompanying shales, sandstones and limestones, form, 

 without doubt, the equivalent formation, stretching all along the 

 West Coast, where favourable circumstances for its preservation have 

 existed. On both sides of the Southern Alps, during the deposition of 

 this extensive formation, as well as at its termination, large eruptions of 

 igneous rocks took place, by which the coalseams on the western side- 

 have undergone such remarkable changes that they have assumed all 

 the characteristics of a true black coal, those on the eastern side 

 being only affected locally. The eruptive rocks on the western side 

 have generally more the character of melaphyres, whilst on the 

 eastern, they are either doleritic, anamesitic, or basaltic. 



During the whole tertiary epoch, oscillations of the ground have 

 continued, the beds deposited in one period being partly, if not almost 

 entirely, destroyed in another. The change of level in Canterbury 

 and Westland was evidently greatest during the middle division of 

 our tertiary epoch (the Oamaru formation), when some portions of 

 Canterbury were at least submerged for 5000 feet, as shown by beds 

 of that age being preserved to that altitude amongst the eastern 

 divergent chains. ]STew Zealand appeared then above the sea level, 

 only as a number of high rocky islands, generally striking in a south- 

 west and north-east direction, with narrow straits between them, and 

 flanked on both sides by a number of smaller rocky islets, just rising 

 above the sea level. It is evident, from the complicated structure of 



