✨ Geological Reports
NEW ZEALAND
GOVERNMENT GAZETTE.
PROVINCE OF CANTERBURY.
Published by Authority.
All Public Notifications which appear in this Gazette, with any Official Signature, are to be considered as Official Communications made to those persons to whom they may relate, and are to be obeyed accordingly.
By His Honor’s Command,
THOMAS WILLIAM MAUDE,
Provincial Secretary.
VOL. X.] WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1863. [No. XV.
REPORTS OF THE PROVINCIAL GEOLOGIST
ON THE
COAL MEASURES AND LIGNITIFEROUS BEDS OF THE RIVER KOWAI,
TRIBUTARY OF THE RIVER WAIMAKARIRI.
REPORT OF THE PROVINCIAL GEOLOGIST
ON THE KOWAI COAL MEASURES.
Geological Survey Office,
Christchurch, January 20th, 1862.
The Kowai River Coal measures occur in a basin five miles long and from one to two miles broad, running east and west. They rest unconformably on older palaeozoic rocks, the age of which cannot yet be exactly ascertained, as the few and only fragmentary fossils which I was able to detect in this region are of too indistinct a character to admit of their being compared, with certainty, with any European, or other well known species. They are all of the same species and belong to the Annelids, having at the same time great resemblance to Serpulites, from which, if we may judge from such meagre data, I should assign to these rocks a silurian age.
These palaeozoic rocks are highly inclined, and sometimes much disturbed, and consist of slates of different colours, of alumschists, mudstones, sandstones and pebble-beds, all much jointed; many of them have all the character of a true graywacke, the cement being partly arenaceous and partly of a kaolin nature.
Interstratified with these rocks we find, as well north as south of the Kowai river, greenstones associated with hornstones and cherts and deposits of manganese and carbonate of iron.
Limestones are exceedingly rare, and with the exception of a large deposit of a fine brecciated and veined marble of a grayish and bluish white colour, south of the river Hawkins, in which I could not detect the least trace of any fossils, and of another dark compact limestone in the Mount Torlesse Range, the whole mountains are singularly devoid of this rock.
These older palaeozoic rocks have been broken through by augitic greenstones, not only before the deposit of the coal (the basin of which, by pressure from both sides, has been in a great measure formed by these eruptions), but even after the first layer of carbonaceous matter had been deposited new eruptions took place, through which these layers were greatly changed, and of which I shall have to speak when treating of the coal measures themselves.
New deposits of coal, and, without doubt, of large thickness, the growth of the vegetation probably assisted by the high temperature then existing, were again formed, which most likely remained undisturbed until volcanic agency began to work in this Island, towards the eocene sub-division of the tertiary period.
From the stratigraphical position of the rocks in the
VOL. X., No. 15.
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Canterbury Provincial Gazette 1863, No 15
✨ LLM interpretation of page content
🌾 Reports on the Coal Measures and Lignitiferous Beds of the River Kowai
🌾 Primary Industries & ResourcesGeology, Coal Measures, Lignitiferous Beds, River Kowai, Waimakariri, Provincial Geologist
- THOMAS WILLIAM MAUDE, Provincial Secretary