A SCIENTIFIC EXCURSION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXX, Issue 10216, 9 December 1893, Page 6

A SCIENTIFIC EXCURSION.

TO THE EDJTOS. Sie, —I have often thought what an advantage it -would bo to the young people of Christchurch, particularly to those who arc occupied all the yeas in attending lectures at the College on all the different branches of learning, if they were able once or twice in the course of the summer to make au expedition to the Mile, or to the mountains, which would be, perhaps, personally conducted by one or more of our local savants. Thus they would be able to study the wonders and beauties of nature, and do a good deal of botany, geology, mineralogy, as well as to make many observations in astronomy, or the worlds above us. Will you allow me to give you an account of a short expedition I made a few weeks ago to the hills in the northern district, where I wes anxious to discover the origin and nature of cha line of downs or bills which, as we all know, runs for hundreds of miles from north to south through this'island, parallel to and near the higher range of mountains. During past years I had explored these downs in various places, as far south nu • Tlmaru, and then I asked for information from more than one of our principal authorities on geological subjects without getting much information, bo I found that I had to trust to myself. I left Amfasrley early one morning and directed my steps to the Upper Valley of the Kowai stiver, where I had of tail seen in the distance some high precipice* which I knew would tell me what I wanted. After passing Broomfield I soon crossed the Kowai, then almost dry, and I coon found that what I had Been was caused by the winter streams of the river washing away the hills. Thus an excellent section extending for more than a mile was exposed to my view| and I could at once see that these downs were, as usual, composed o! nothing bat sand, earth, stone or gravel, and here and there small partially-worn boulders. Ko sign of reek anywhere, bo that I was able to determine that our downs—or foot-hills as they would call them in America—are, as £ had long suspected, nothing but the moraines of ancient glaciers which issued in ages past from the mountains, which were then possibly, twice the height they are now. Having settled this important point to my satisfaction, I climbed by circuitous sheeptracks to the top of the downs, which are here from two to three hundred feet high, intending to continue my walk to the Waipara Valley, only a few miles off. But I found these hills cut up into the most precipitous valleys, which were of course excavated by the action of rain and flood. After sliding down one of these heights, I was painfully ascending the other side by the help of the tussocks, when I eat down —of course to admire the view—when I was surprised to observe in the banks of the little stream below me and which I had just crossed, what, appeared to be a number of fossil chellse I thought itrwas impossible there could be any shells there, and then, of course, it would completely destroy my theory of moraines. However, I nad, rather unwillingly, to retrace my steps and found to my satisfaction that they were only soma finely-worn pieces of chalk or limestone of a brilliant white colour. I now walked for some miles through some fine undulating land; the property of a Scotch baronet, beautifully farmed and covered with thousands of fine, long-woolled sheep, until at last I came to a friend’s house in the Waipara Valley. Here I was informed that the yellow native clematis—Cafoliata —was just then flowering in great beauty among the rocks a mile or so further on, and of course I had at once to go and inspect it; but as I have since found that this pretty plant, a mass of flowers without any leaves, grows everywhere under the cliffs on the Sumner road, I need say no more about it. My friend now took me down to the Waipara river to which we had to descend by one terrace after another, and he pointed out the bare hills in the distance which had once bean covered with a thick totara forest, and even now I could perceive, far away, as the eun shone about them, the logs still prostrate on the ground. I was shown the trunk of a tree about three feet in diameter completely turned into a hard, blue stone, which a scientific friend who has since examined a piece of it assures me has not a trace of lime in it. Similar wood is found in the Ashley and the Eakaia, and there are several specimens of it in our museum. It appears to me that if the water we drink is able to turn wood into stone instead of rotting it as in other parts of the world, it must eventually have a decided effect on our national character, and render us conspicuous for a certain hardness of heart. We now inspected several limestone reefs full of shells, and as wa climbed up the terraces again I thought what a help these valleys could afford to the calculation of geological time in, at any sate, the tertiary and quaternary periods, about which so little is known at present; that people might perhaps determine Dow long it took the water to wear away a lower channel from the first terrace to the second, and so on to the third, and from that down to the present level of the stream, the volume of the water always getting less with the denudation of ' the mountains and the decreasing mass of enow and ice. As i walked along I picked' up u fine cone of dark red jasper among the tussocks, and I longed to know where and how many miles away in the interior the bed-rock of this beautiful stone is to bo seen. I hope after the busy season of shearing is over to make another visit to the Waipara

and penetrate a few miles further up its source. lam promised a sight of a quarry full of saurian remains, and from which came anew specimen of the plesiosaurus which has been lately described by Professor Hutton to the Geological Society of London. lam also to be ehown-a number of various springs of sulphur water, some black and others white.—l am, &c. D. BROWN.