68 
Puias of the natives, with deposits of silicious incrustations, alum, gyp- 
sum and sulphur. Formation of small mud cones, 
b) The hot springs of the Bay of Islands Zone. 
Upon South Island: 
The hot springs of the Inland Kaikoras. 
From the preceding synopsis it appears, that the history of 
the geological development of New Zealand can be traced to the 
very remotest periods of the earth’s history. 
At the time, when the neighbouring Australia, one of the oldest 
continents of the earth — at least, as regards the eastern and 
western portions of it, the latter consisting principally of palaeozoic 
strata, — arose from the depths of the ocean, there were also 
portions of New Zealand already projecting above the mighty main 
as rugged, barren masses of land; their shape, of course, was 
very different from the present appearance of the archipelago; they 
perhaps stood in connection with larger continental bodies, that 
long ago have been submerged again in the depths of the watery 
abyss. But while the eastern and western portions of Australia since 
the close of the palaeozoic period have been quiet, and the soil 
rarely disturbed, upon which plants and animals found ample chance 
to grow and propagate themselves in an uninterrupted succession 
up to this present time; New Zealand, on the other hand, was 
till within the latest period a scene of the grandest revolutions and 
convulsive struggles of the earth which, continually changing the 
original form of the land, gave it by degrees its present shape. 
Numerous observations made on the North and South Islands 
lead to the conclusion, that not until within the most recent period 
of the earth, after the tertiary period (probably with the commence- 
ment and during the time of the volcanic action on both islands) 
large portions of the land were raised by quite 2000 feet, some 
parts even by 5000 feet above the level of the sea; not all at 
one time , but by slow and gradual secular elevations , perhaps 
with longer and shorter intervals of perfect stagnation. To this 
