is there any eroded shore platform on which it might rest. If this had been the case, the pebbles should have been formed of the country rock, a basalt or basic andesite, and although pieces of this do occur they are not beach-worn at all. There is also the objection, that had the land been 200 feet lower, then all the present spit would have been submerged to a depth of at least 25-30 fathoms, and the sea would have extended over a wide belt of plain to the west. It would then have been impossible for greywacke pebbles of the beach type to have been transported across such a belt of sea, at least 25 miles wide, in the numbers that actually occur, as taking into account their only possible source they must have been. The pebbles should have been of Banks Peninsula origin had they been a beach deposit. On the end of the spur terminating in the Devil's Knob there is a capping of loess, and in this at a height of nearly 300 feet are very small quartz and jasperoid pebbles, never more than an inch in diameter and in very small numbers. These might conceivably have been blown to the position where they occur, or they may have been derived from the heaps of moa gizzard stones, which they most closely resemble, the remains of moa bones being also a characteristic content of the loess. If there had been any definite beach on the hills close to Lake Forsyth, similar deposits should occur on the hills to the west, and all I can find are occasional small pebbles either on or in the loess. The ends of these spurs also show signs of having been occupied by the Maoris as ovens occur frequently. Further west still they are increasingly scarce and finally do not appear at all. So I must conclude that they were not deposited in that situation by the sea, but carried there by adventitious means. All the same I am not prepared to say what this is, except that it is conceivable that heavy seas may have been responsible for some of them near the present coastline, wind for some of the smaller ones; and also, since these spurs were formerly inhabited, that they may have been carried to their present position by man himself.†

If they have been deposited in the position where they now lie by the sea, and some of them are really included in the loess, then it again opens the question as to whether the loess is a silt deposit, as maintained by Hutton, or a land deposit as maintained by most other authorities, including Haast and Heim.