ARAPUNI'S SECRETS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXI, 17 January 1928, Page 4

ARAPUNI'S SECRETS

STUMPS OF ANCIENT "FOREST

PROFESSOR BARTRUM'S VIEW

The theories advanced in the ( "New Zealand Herald" concerning the geological history of the Arapuni country, through which the river in its new course has cut a deep channel, are confirmed by Professor J. A. Bartrum, who occupies the chair of geology at Auckland University College, but he considers it quite probable the tree-stumps that have been revealed may be several thousand years old (says the "Herald.") It is a well-known fact, he states, that swamp water, by a process not thoroughly understood, 'will preserve timber for ages. Around the city there are many, proofs of this. Near the jetty at Takapuna, for instance, there .are kauri stumps once buried by lava which are probably 2000 years old, if not more.

The professor explained that there were few means of fixing geological periods in years, and estimates varied considerably. The age of the three periods that had been exposed by the erosion at Arapuni were in the realm of conjecture. There was no doubt the Waikato River had once followed the high course which was now the headrace, that the forest had later grown up on the abandoned bed, and that water-borne pumice had later partly buried the trees, the exposed tops of which had probably been consumed By fire, seeing that no wood but the stump's remained, and that charcoal had Been found. t, One proof of the fact that the trees had died a very long time ago was that since tho river, left the course in which they had grown, it had cut the gorge 200 ft deep, in which it had now been dammed, through six or seven flood planes it had previously built up. Each of these terraces, of course, represented a very considerable period of time.

Asked how the water-borne prfmice which had partly submerged the trees could have been there deposited if the river was" already cutting the gorge course, • the professor said that after some great eruption it was quite likely this material would have temporarily blocked the river and for a time caused it to flow again in {he channel it had abandoned, thus pouring pumice and other debris in that direction. From photographs he was sure this had happened. The preservation of the stumps suggested there had been swampy conditions for a long time.