Canterbury and Westland. 381 



other possibility, namely, that from some cosmical or physical causes 

 the level of the sea might have stood at a lower level than it stands at 

 present. "We have been always accustomed to hear it stated as an 

 axiom that whilst the land sinks or rises, the level of the sea is always 

 the same. It will thus appear heterodox to believe in the level of the 

 sea undergoing, according to changes in the crust of the earth or in 

 the configuration of the land (not to take cosmical agencies into 

 account), more or less considerable oscillations. However, I am 

 convinced that future researches will tend to prove that such changes 

 have repeatedly taken place, and that the character and distribution 

 of plants and animals have been greatly governed by them. Mr. A. E. 

 "Wallace, in his valuable work on the Geographical Distribution of 

 animals, when speaking on the same subject quotes the views of Mr. 

 T. Belt,* and gives afterwards his own views on the subject. I can 

 <lo no better than quote his own words. 



" One of the most recent, and not the least able, of the writers on 

 this question (Mr. Belt) shows strong reasons for adopting the view 

 that the Ice period was simultaneous in both hemispheres; and he 

 calculates that the vast amount of water abstracted from the ocean 

 and locked up in mountains of ice around the two poles, would lower 

 the general level of the ocean about 2000 feet. Tins would be 

 -equivalent to a general elevation of the land to the same amount, and 

 would thus tend to intensify the cold ; and this elevation may enable 

 us to understand the recent discoveries of signs of glacial action at 

 moderate elevations in Central America and Brazil, far within the 

 tropics. At the same time, the weight of ice piled up in the north 



* Since this chapter was written I have had the advantage of perusing a paper by the same 

 author, "The Glacial Period in the Southern Hemisphere," in the ''Quarterly Journal of 

 Science," July, 1877, in which Mr. Belt amplifies his views on the same subject, making special 

 reference to the Canterbury plains. In the notes on the iormation of the plains, added, to this 

 chapter, I have explained once more fully that " the sheets of gravel do not wrap round the hills, 

 and are not spread right across the water-sheds between the different river systems," but that we 

 have a series of large fans of fluviatile deposits before us, according to the bulk of the former 

 glaciers, of more or less size, and that between these fans smaller streams., net being of glacier 

 origin, flow. Doyne's levels have confirmed this conclusively. Of course the more we advance 

 towards the coast the more these fans become shallow, but they never lose their character, and 

 the numerous narrow and deep channels higher up the plains by which the latter are 

 furrowed, become giadually broader and shallower, showing that the waters dewing now less 

 rapidly and having more room to expand, spread over a larger area. Souu of the sections in my 

 first paper on the formation of the Canterbury plains may have helped to su it a wrong interpre- 

 tation of the points at issue, as owing to insufficient altitude observations, an: le want of corres- 

 ponding readings near the sea shore, the true form of the fluviatile fana in question was only 

 imperfectly given. 



