Canterbury and Westland. 297 



There are also some other fragmentary portions of bones in the 

 Canterbury Museum which appear to belong to species as yet unde- 

 scribed ; but as the explorations of the beds by the Geological Survey 

 of New Zealand is being actively prosecuted, I have no doubt that 

 considerable light will be thrown Upon the occurrence of these remark- 

 able saurians, of which many have their nearest allies in the mesozoic 

 beds of the North American Continent. , 



The next bed in ascending order is of great thickness, and consists 

 principally of greensauds, the grains of glauconite being often so 

 numerous that the rocks appear almost black. Sometimes marly or 

 argillaceous beds are interstratined with these greensauds. There is 

 generally found in this horizon a great sameness of character in all the 

 sections examined. A few saurian bones have been discovered in these 

 greensauds, but they are very scarce, generally very fragmentary, and 

 seem to indicate that the true enalosaurians now neared their extinction. 

 In the Malvern Hills these green sands gradually get lighter in colour, 

 and are capped by quartzose sands in light tints, the whole forming 

 cliffs 300 to 400 feet high. In the more northern portion of the 

 Province the former alter by degrees to argillaceous and calcareous 

 deposits, forming sometimes small beds of chalk marls, or even chalk- 

 like limestones, which are succeeded by a glauconitic, calcareous 

 sandstone. This last is the highest bed in the whole series, and by it 

 the interesting "Waipara formation is closed in that district and its 

 neighbourhood, where it forms generally high cliffs and bold escarp- 

 ments. In the Malvern Hills, on the other hand, the calcareous beds 

 are entirely missing, the uppermost arenaceous deposits belonging to 

 this formation being covered by several coulees of basic rocks, with 

 sometimes beds of palagonite tufa between them. In some localities 

 a break seems to occur between the upper and lower calcareous series, 

 as, for instance, in the Weka Pass ranges, where the lower, more 

 ^calcareous strata are sometimes separated from the glauconitic massive 

 upper beds by a small band of greensand containing concretions of a 

 more calcareous nature. However, in many other localities this small 

 bed does not occur, and the boundary between the two series is either 

 gradual or sharply denned. Moreover, the upper beds are found to 

 be always conformable upon the lower where the latter exists, being, 

 in fact, a continuation of the same series, and owing to the sinking of 

 the land, of greater horizontal extent than the more calcareous beds 

 underlying them. Such a concretionary structure in the middle of the 

 calcareous series is, however, not uncommon, and occurs also in the 



