THE ORIGIN OF THE FAUNA AND FLORA OF NEW ZEALAND. 265 
and Captain Aylward—have expressed this opinion from a per- 
sonal knowledge of the country ; and Mr. Wallace has forgotten 
to mention that at the meeting of the Geological Society at 
which Mr. Stow’s paper was read, Mr. Griesbach, who had ex- 
amined the district, “disputed the possibility of any of the gravels 
(of the Vaal) being of glacial origin.”* Again, Mr. Wallace says 
that “ we have here a// the chief surface phenomena characteris- 
tic of a-glaciated country.”+ But this is not quite correct. The 
only phenomena mentioned are striations, rounded hills, and 
unstratified gravels and clays, with boulders, called by Mr. 
Wallace morainic matter. There are no perched blocks, no ter- 
minal moraines, no glacier lakes. Now rounded hills occur in 
many places where no ice has ever been, and various marks have 
often been mistaken for glacial strie, and tumultuous accumula- 
tions of gravel with boulders occur in all mountainous countries 
liable to floods. The only unmistakeable evidences of ancient 
glacier action—viz., terminal moraines and lakes—are absent. 
It is true that Dr. Shaw mentions abundant lacustrine deposits 
along the Vaal River,{ and these may occupy old glacier lakes. 
But if so, these deposits clearly do not “point to a period so 
recent that it must almost certainly have been contemporaneous 
with the glacial period of the northern hemisphere.” On the 
contrary, they point toa time older, perhaps, than the glacial 
epoch of New Zealand. There js also another and quite distinct 
line of argument, which leads to exactly the same conclusion. 
The mountain system of the Transvaal, in Lat. 25° S. to 27°S,, 
may be compared to the New Zealand Alps, between the lati- 
tudes 44° S. and 45° S. The S. African mountains are certainly 
not higher, and the rainfall on them is certainly not greater. 
But this portion of the New Zealand Alps has no glaciers at all 
comparable to the large ones supposed to have formerly existed 
in the Transvaal, although it is 18° further south, and is much 
nearer to the sea, so that a reduction of temperature sufficient to 
bring glaciers to the Transvaal would be equivalent to moving it 
at least 20° further south. Now Kerguelen’s Land, situated in 
48° S,, would also be virtually removed 20° further south—that 
is to a latitude where, as I have already mentioned, no vegeta- 
tion, except perhaps a few mosses and lichens, could exist. If 
this has been so, the whole of its present phanerogamic flora 
must have been introduced since this glacial epoch. But as out 
of its 21 species of flowering plants there are two genera and 
eleven species found only there or in the neighbouring islands, 
we cannot suppose that its flora dates only from the pleistocene. 
Consequently this glacial epoch, if it ever took place, must have 
been long anterior to the glacial epoch of Europe. 
Proofs of a former extension of glaciers undoubtedly occur in 
Melewe America as far north as.42°.S., which is about the 
northerly limit of glacier marks in New Zealand. But in South 
* Quar. Jour. Geol. Soc. XXVIIL., p. 27. 
f Island Life, p. 158, foot-note. 
¥ Quar. Jour. Geol. Soc. XXVIIL., p. 26, 
