“Revolving your map as you have explained it and taking the section from W to E. into consideration, I see no help for the fate of the disputed rocks but this. Either the main ranges are of one, or of more than one epoch. If the latter, how are we, on the supposition of an independent coal formation, to account for the occurrence of the carbonaceous beds on both sides of the anticlinal of Tararua, with parallel strike and dips; and would not any coal formation be unconformable^* to the other rocks if they are older? You have plenty of evidence as to the existence of igneous rocks, of probably, several ages in that chain. You give prominence to jasperoid masses which testify to transmutation. My notes on the specimens show that there have been dislocation and upheaval. Then you have, certainly, evidence of the intrusion at some time or another of porphyry. In all these respects but the strike and dip, I see a great conformity with the Eastern side of Haast's great fissure in Nelson; and the ranges there may agree with yours.^† But Hochstetter has an idea of a shifting of these ranges to the eastward page 13 in Wellington and Auckland. Could your ranges be really different from those in the Middle Island; i.e., more to the east, and covered or only occasionally appearing in Canterbury? I have laid down your colouring on the small map of Petermann, and it looks as if your Rimutaka ranges crossed to Cape Campbell, and the Aorangi ranges struck out for the Christchurch country;^‡ in which case the Nelson ranges would appear again on the east side of Taupo Lake, where you have a patch of a similar formation. If this is the case all your formation in the heart of the ranges may be of different general age to the West Nelson country; and therefore we need not look to that for comparison. Nevertheless, there are in some of your younger igneous rocks resemblances to some of Haast's. But then again where are the well developed secondary rocks which undoubtedly exist in Nelson, if not in Canterbury? All you have are the patches of vegetable tissue in the plant beds and the Theca?^∥ or Dentalium in No. 39, for I have seen no other fossil in any of your collections.^§ The supposed graphite would naturally point to old Silurian rocks rather than to young secondary, or upper Palæozoic. But whether they are lower or upper does not appear. The Makara rocks look marvellously like upper Silurian.^* In that case you will have probably very little gold; and as certainly no regular coal formation, though the carbonaceous matter is quite in agreement with experience.