A44 JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
no glacier descends to within 4000 feet of the sea, is particularly in- 
structive, when we consider that these Southern Alps are at 
about the same distance from the Equator as the Pyrenees and 
the city of Florence. To the east of the mountains the land 
drops suddenly to a level of about 2000 feet above the sea, and 
then by gentle slopes and immense flat bare plains sinks gradu- 
ally to the coast. The continuity of the plains is broken by 
ridges of low rounded hills, which on close examination often 
prove to be old moraine accumulations ; while many of the plains 
are the basins of ancient lakes, the old shores being very sharply 
defined. Inthe southern and northern portions of the South 
Island the arrangement of mountains and plains is considerably 
modified by the splitting up and bifurcation of the main axis of 
elevation, but flat plains extending to the very foot of the highest 
peaks of the main chain are most characteristic of New Zealand, 
and totally unlike other mountainous countries, where ranges of 
foot-hills have to be ascended and upland valleys traversed 
before the higher ranges can be reached. In the province of 
Canterbury, where the mountains attain their greatest height in 
Mount Cook, or Ao-Rangi as it is called in the Maori tongue, - 
these features are most distinctly observable, the Canterbury 
plains followed by the Mackenzie plains extending up to the 
very ice, and so flat that Dr Haast said he would undertake to 
drive a buggy the whole way from Christchurch to the foot of 
the Tasman glaciers. We tried it with an express wagon and 
three horses, and nearly accomplished it. The country was level 
enough, but the boulders as we drew near tothe glaciers proved 
a little too much for a wheeled vehicle, and,our waggon ended its 
days by being capsized in the Tasman river. 
These New Zealand rivers have been a source of much 
difficulty to colonial development. They are so swift and 
erratic in their courses that fords are dangerous and bridges 
difficult to construct. Once the rivers leave the mountains there 
is nothing to keep them to one channel, as the plains, nore. com- 
posed of loose boulders and sand, are easily eaten away by the 
swift streams swelled in summer by the melting of thesnow. A 
river bed is therefore a broad sheet of gravel through which a 
number of small streams wander and change day by day—what 
was a main channel one day being quite a secondary stream 
in the lapse of a week or so. Much time was often spent in 
crossing one river, with the delays of searching for fords; but 
now that railways run north and south the problem has been solved 
on the most important route by bridges, some nearly a mile in 
length. In the province of Otago rich woods extend right across 
the island to the east coast, giving place in many districts, how- 
ever, to immense plains covered with tussock grass and Spaniard 
or sword grass, except where the farmer has come and adorned 
the landscape with waving fields of wheat. Farther north the 
great snowy chain seems to form a complete barrier to the | 
moisture and vegetation of the west ; the plains, hills, and valleys 
are all bare, as if shaven, and of the one uniform brownish-yellow 
