1918.] The N.Z. Journal of Science and Technology. 173 
examined under the microscope and compared with sections from the 
underlying rock are seen to consist of foraminiferal limestone essentially 
similar. Again, the coarse sandstone bands exposed at the foot of the 
bluff separating Gore Bay from Port Robinson, and occurring at least 
50 ft. above the base of the series, contain fragments of a limestone which 
cannot be distinguished from that forming part of the older Tertiary beds 
of the neighbourhood. 
The beds just described are the Scalaria beds of von Haast,* who 
correlated them with the similar rocks occurring at Amuri Bluff, Kaikoura 
Peninsula, and Waipara, and usually known as the grey marls. Huttonf 
classed them with the Awatere beds of his Pareora formation. The rocks 
contain few fossils, and these occur chiefly in the coarser sandy and pebbly 
beds near the base of the formation. The two collected by the writer from 
these beds at the bluff north of Port Robinson were identified by Mr. H. Suter 
as Epitonium lyratum and Rapana cf. waihaoensis. In addition a tooth of 
Carcharodon and a fragment of a tooth of Lanina, as well as fragments of 
bone, were found in the conglomerate of phosphatized limestone. 
Overlying the series last described are thick layers of well-consolidated 
conglomerate, in which the individual pebbles, rarely more than 3 in. in 
diameter, consist of completely smoothed greywacke together with a few 
rounded fragments of quartz. The matrix is generally a coarse sand, and 
in places this material forms thin lenses in the conglomerate. These beds 
form cliffs, from 100 ft. to 150 ft. in height, that back the sand-dunes at 
Gore Bay for more than a mile. In places the matrix, especially near the 
base of the series, is decidedly calcareous; and where this is the case the 
pebbles decrease in size and number, and the rock passes into a pebbly 
limestone. Such a rock forms a line of stony outcrops that extend for 
over a mile near the road from the Hurunui flats to Gore Bay. Other 
localities where this phase of the beds occurs are at the top of the section 
described near the mouth of Jed Stream, and again at Sub-Trig. D, half 
a mile north-east of Cheviot Post-office, from which point similar rocks 
form a low ridge extending westward for at least a mile. 
Immediately south of the old slip at Port Robinson soft horizontally 
bedded sandstone forms a bare cliff 100 ft. high. Towards the base is a 
band of conglomerate 6 ft. thick, containing fragments of greywacke, lime¬ 
stone, and argillaceous sandstone, as well as spherical concretions. The 
sandstone, which is bluish-grey in colour, contains numerous fossils, among 
which a small Turritella is most common. This rock forms the cape south 
of Port Robinson, and in the road-cutting is seen to be interbedded with 
bands of well-rounded pebbles. 
The exact position of these beds in relation to the conglomerate 
occurring at Gore Bay was not determined, but the writer considers them 
a phase of the latter rock. The conglomerate and pebbly limestone are 
undoubtedly beach deposits, and the fossiliferous sandstone was probably 
deposited in deeper water. At Gore Bay, 10 chains south of the point 
where the road to the Hurunui flats leaves the beach, an unconformable 
contact between the conglomerates and the underlying grey sandstones is 
to be seen in the face of the cliff. The bedding-planes of the two series 
are approximately parallel, but the actual contact is decidedly irregular. 
Von Haast regarded the conglomerates as the gravels of an ancient river 
which were unconformably deposited both on the Scalaria beds and on 
the Turritella beds,J by which name he designated the soft sandstones 
outcropping south of the slip at Port Robinson. 
* Op. cit., p. 43. 
y Op. cit., pp. 47, 48. 
t Op cit., p. 44. 
