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1C) 
My first field of action was the Province of Auckland, Bv 
the ample means with which the most worthy Superintendent of 
the Province, the Hon. J. Williamson, furnished me, I was enabled 
in the short space of five months, to traverse the greater portion 
of this province, comprising almost the whole Northern half of the 
North Island, and to accomplish in}' object on a larger scale accor- 
ding to a fixed plan. 
For the first two months, January and February, the town 
of Auckland itself continued to be the centre of my excursions, 
the season not yet appearing favorable for longer journeys on 
foot into the interior of the country. First of all, therefore, I 
purposed to finish the researches on the brown coal in the vici- 
nity of the capital, and on the remarkable Auckland -volcanoes, 
which I had begun during the stay of the Novara: which object 
I accomplished by making a detailed geological survey of the dis- 
trict of Auckland. Indeed , the nearest environs of the capital 
even, despite a few preparatory sketches of Mr. C. Heaphy, were 
in a geological respect almost as unexplored as the remote interior 
of the country. Sketches and outlines of a topographical map on 
a large scale (1 inch == 1 sea-mile) furnished me by the Provincial 
surveyor’s office, served as a basis for a geological map of the 
Auckland District. 
On a closer examination the comltry presented a far greater 
variety of geological formations than I had anticipated. The re- 
markable, extinct volcanoes on the Isthmus of Auckland engaged 
my attention the most, unique as they are in their kind both 
with respect to their number on so small a space , and the peculiar 
shape of their cones and craters and their streams of lava. In a 
circumference of only 10 miles from Auckland I had to note down 
no less than (>1 extinct points of eruption. An excursion southward to 
the Manukau Harbour and the mouth of the Waikato River led to the 
discovery of very interesting fossils on the Southside of the mouth 
of the Waikato and along the West-coast, to the discovery of 
belemnites and beautifully preserved fossil ferns. By this circum- 
stance the existence of secondary strata upon New Zealand was for 
