Canterbury and Westland. 257 



covering a great portion of the country between the Paringa and 

 "Waita rivers. From here to the northern banks of the Arawata river, 

 it appears to exist only as isolated hills. I have coloured the slate 

 formation on the south bank of the last-mentioned river as belonging 

 to another formation, next to be considered. It consists of an 

 alternation of silky clay slate and bluish feist ones striking south- 

 west and north-east, and having a dip of 70 to 80 degrees to the 

 north-west. It is very possible that these beds may also belong to 

 the "Westland formation, the more so as I have since been informed 

 that rocks belonging to the gneiss granite formation have been 

 discovered south of the Arawata river. 



Textuee op Bocks ant> Position op Strata. 



The strata under consideration, judging from their lithological 

 character, can however be divided into two main divisions, of which 

 the first consists of gneiss and mica schists, and other beds of a similar 

 highly metamorphic structure ; and the other, of silky and mostly 

 light-coloured slates, alternating with fine-grained sandstones and 

 felstones. The former is well developed near Lake Hall, south of the 

 Paringa river ; and the latter in Mount Greenland on the northern 

 banks of the Mikonui. The rocks near Lake Hall consist of fine- 

 grained gneiss and mica schists with veins and dykes of granite, the 

 latter often coarse grained — dipping at a high angle to the west. 



Phyllites, altering to gneissic schists, also occur in this district. The 

 principal locality in the other zone — a zone which I examined carefully, 

 and which seems to cover the greatest extent of ground, but, by many 

 gradations, appears to pass into the first — is situated on the northern 

 banks of the Mikonui river. Bluish clay slates, with occasional beds 

 of fine-grained sandstone, are here exposed in many spots. In 

 Redman's Gully, they dip 60 degrees to the north-by-east. In some 

 other places higher up the river, they are more inclined, and dip to 

 the north-east. They are full of quartz veins, mostly of small 

 dimensions ; but none of them, as far as I am aware, have hitherto 

 been found of sufficiently auriferous nature to be worth working. 

 Some of the most interesting localities in that neighbourhood, as, for 

 instance, Mount Kangitoto on the southern banks of the Mikonui, are 

 unknown to me, but the Canterbury Museum possesses a large series 

 of specimens, collected by many intelligent friends of that Institution, 



i 



