AUCKLAND'S VOLCANOES.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLII, Issue XLII, 12 October 1922, Page 8

AUCKLAND'S VOLCANOES.

THEIR PROBABLE AGE

There were many volcanic outbuxeySsome on. particularly grand scales, in the South. Island or" ■JNe.w Zealand in Miocene times, but volcanic activity in that island apparently is quit© dead, states Mr. P. G. Morgan, Director of the Geological Purvey. He explains that none of the hot springs in the area comes from suoierranean lavas ; all are caused by heated water rising up fault planes. The most intense volcanic activity in New. Zealand was displayed in the central part of the North Island, and tnere is eviffeEce that it has not ceased. Catastrophes in the past 40 years show that a close study by New Zealand's geologists of the volcanic conditions of the thermal district may result in saving lives, in addition to the academic interest it claims. When Mount Tarawera, which seemed to be, extinct, burst out on June 10, 1886, 130 lives were lost. An eruption at White Island* Bay of Plenty, in September, 1914, caused the death of 11 sulphur miners. The Waimangu Geyser, Rotorua, took four people in 1903, and an actual volcanic eruption at Fryingpan Flat, in 1907, claimed two people. Many small volcanoes near the site of Auckland City were active in Pleistocene times. They were recent times, geologically, belonging to the post-Ter-tiary age. Mr. Morgan believes that some of these volcanoes were active within1 even; the past few thousand years. Mount Egmont's beautiful cone was formed in the Pleistocene. Volcanic action in New Zealand w*s «*re intense in most of the periods of the Tertiary Era, which immediately preceded the present era, than at any former age. Areas in New Zealand that contain Palaeozoic rocks—rocks of ~ the ( era of early life —do not seem to be clearly defined. No Palaeozoic rocks have been found in the North Island. The ages of some South Island rocks classed/as Palaeozoic are somewhat doubtful. Only five New Zealand areas of jPalaeozoic rocks contain recognisable fossils. These areas are' in Collingwood; in Preservation Inlet, Southern Sounds; at the Baton river, Waunea County, Nelson; near Reefton, West Coast; and in the 37un 'Mountains, Nelson. Rocks that are believed to be the oldest in New Zealand occur in the Southern Sounds. Knowledge available takes Mr. Morgan back to periods in the Palaeozoic I^-a when New Zealand was the foreshore of a great ancient continent, long ago dismembered, known to geologists as Gondwanaland:.