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1880. | Geology and Paleontology. : 683 
The portion of rocks in which the tracks are made (though 
many of them were nearly effaced by the action of the waves) 
was about fifteen to twenty feet in length, and from six to eight 
feet in width. Many of the impressions were close together, and 
with few exceptions were of nearly the same size. The tracks 
pointed in various directions, but some of them followed each 
other at regular intervals like successive tracks of the same bird, 
the strides were about nineteen to twenty inches from heel to 
heel. I noticed, however, some smaller tracks with strides of 
twelve and a-half to thirteen and a-half inches, which seem to 
accompany the larger tracks, as if they were made by a young 
bird, but these were too much effaced to be procured. At still 
another place I noticed some small tracks, such as might be 
made by a bird no bigger than a pigeon. ee 
The tracks are in a soft sandstone which is being rapidly worn 
away by the action of the water and the weather, and the impres- 
sions are gradually disappearing. The sandstone isa mud de- 
osit. We may imagine then, that these birds walked over the 
Still wet sand, left by the receding of the river, a short time after 
it had subsided, leaving their tracks, and that afterwards the wind 
arose and drifted a coarser sand over them, as well as over the 
Whole surface of the mud, to a depth of about half an inch. 
he spot where the tracks are exposed to view is about at high 
water mark, and therefore much washed by the waves and so 
much effaced as to be scarcely worth removing. But by following 
up the surface of the sandstone stratum in which they occur, and 
judging by the direction they Jed, I split off numerous slabs of the 
overlying strata, in hopes of finding some better specimens, finally 
I traced them under a shallow bank, which was, perhaps, eight 
feet high, and was the lower part of a large plain; the upper por- 
tion is perhaps twenty-five to thirty feet high in some places, but 
whether these impressions ran under this to any great distance, it 
would be most impossible to tell unless a shaft was sunk on this 
plain. Running through the plain there are two rivers, viz: the 
and the Arai, and occupies a middle position, rather towards the 
South-west of the plain; and the Taruheru, which falls into the 
Sea at Poverty bay, at the north-eastern corner of the bay. At 
this point it was composed of sandy alluvium, containing shelly 
lay ers of recent species; below this occur successive strata of 
imperfectly solidified sandstone from four to six inches thick, and 
Separated from each other by a thin layer of coarser sand an 
small pebbles, from a quarter to half an inch thick, and it is 
Owing to this layer of comparatively loose sand that the impres- 
sions are so well preserved. At this point I dug out a slab two 
feet by three feet, of this soft sandstone, which is probably of Post- 
drift age. This rare specimen contains four fine footprints and 
Part of the fifth; length of stride of these footprints is nineteen 
