Glacial Period in the 
[July, 
coast, and back from it for about 26 miles, besides sending 
arms up the valleys of the Mataura, Oreti, and Jacob 
Rivers. This plain is composed of shingle, sand, and clay, 
with some seams of lignite near the base of the deposits. 
It wraps around the Moonlight Range and Hokonui Hills, 
which stand up like islands out of it. The beds of which 
it is composed contain the bones of the great extindt 
apterous birds. Marine remains are not found, but Captain 
Hutton ascribes its formation to the adtion of the sea when 
the land stood at a lower level, as he finds it impossible to 
believe “ that the alluvia of the Mataura, the Oreti, and 
the Jacob Rivers should all join one another with gradual 
slopes behind the seaward range of hills without the inter- 
vention of some uniform widely-adting cause, such as the 
sea.”* 
Section N. Side of Oamaru (Captain Hutton). 
a. Gravels of the Plains. 
b. Silt with Moa Bones at *. 
c. Gravels with twenty-two species of Marine Shells, all but two still living 
on the New Zealand coasts. 
d. Basalt. 
These plains rise gradually from the sea-coast until they 
attain a height of about 600 feet next the mountains. On 
the coast they overlie marine deposits of late Pliocene age. 
The above sedtion, from the work already quoted, shows the 
relation of the beds on the north side of Oamaru Cape. 
The silt formation extends inland for a considerable dis- 
tance, and is extensively developed at Hampden. Captain 
Hutton notes the great analogy it presents to the Pampean 
formation of South America. The remains of the extindt 
birds are distributed, like those of the extindt beasts at 
Buenos Ayres, throughout the deposit. The above sedtion 
might indeed be almost exadtly paralleled from South Ame- 
rica, more especially in Patagonia, where the gravel-beds 
* Geology and Gold-Fields of Otago, p. 79. 
