88 
and clearly understood only when the successive order of the Austra- 
lian and New Zealand strata with their organic remains shall have 
been as clearly ascertained and determined as the European series 
of formations. 
In addition to the coalfields on the West coast of South Island 
extensive tracts of carboniferous deposits have been known to exist 
tor several years past also on the East side of the mountains. 
Already since 1857, a coal mine has been worked near the Mal- 
vern Hills, in Canterbury, about 30 miles from Christchurch , which 
supplies the neighbouring sheep stations with fuel. My friend Dr. 
Haast examined this locality more closely in the summer of 1861, 
and found in the bed of the Kowai River seams of a hard black 
glistening coal three to six feet thick and very much like anthra- 
cite. This Kowai coalfield is easy of access from Canterbury; it 
is situated just between hill and dale, and the construction of a 
railroad would meet here with no difficulties whatever. Deposits of 
brown coal arc found to underlie the tertiary rocks of the higher 
portions of the great, Canterbury plains, and occur in the valleys 
of the Selvyn, Upper Waimakariri , Eakaia, Rangitata, Ashburton, 
Northern Hinds, Potts, Tenawai and other rivers, in the Malvern 
Hills, Mount Somers, Big Ben Range, Thirteen Mile Bush and 
many other places. 
In the Province of Otago, as Dr. Hector writes, the best known 
and most important deposit of the brown coal formation is that on 
the Southeast coast, northward from the Molyneux River, where 
it extends continuously over at least forty-five scpiare miles, forming 
hills 500 to 1000 feet in height. In this formation there are several 
seams of good coal varying from six to twenty feet in thickness, 
their aggregate thickness in a section three miles in length, ex- 
posed on the sea shore, amounting to 56 feet. The total quantity 
of coal in this district lias been estimated at 100,000,000 tons. 
Two large mines have been opened in this coalfield. The Clutha 
Mine is on the sea coast, about three miles from the mouth of the 
Clutha River. The principal consumption of this coal has been 
for local use and for the steam navigation of the river; but as it 
