SUBMERGED FOREST

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 893, 10 February 1930, Page 11

SUBMERGED FOREST

WAITEMATA ONCE A ‘ WOODED VALLEY

TIMBER RECOVERED BrouKht to the surface In the buckets of the Harbour Board’s dredge Jiapai during recent dredging operations in St. Mary's Bay, roots of trees, obviously of great age, and a small piece of timber with a soft stone coating. lends further colour to the theory that the Wattemata was once a thickly wooded valley. A commonly accepted theory is that pot only the Waitemata, but also a greater part of the Hauraki Gulf, with its innumerable inlets and islands, is a sunken valley of not very great geological age. Fourteen years ago similar finds were made during dredging operations in Mechanics' Bay. specimens of the timber then recovered now being preserved in the Harbour Board’s office. Professor J. A. Bartrum, of the Auckland University College, examined the specimens at the time, and commented upon the partially carbonised nature of the wood, and the presence in the concretions of fossilised crabs and molluscs of a contemporary species. “It is evident,” he wrote in a paper read before the Auckland Institute on December 13, 1916, “that these concretions not only arc contemporaneous with the beds in which they exist but further, have been formed at no verv distant date.” The subsidence of the harbour in comparatively recent times is a conclusion upon which all leading geologists are agreed. Brof€*ssor X*. IVlarshall, referring to the Auckland Isthmus in his “Geography of New Zealand,” says the inlets with which it abounds “are certainly drowned river yalleys, and the absence of terraces round the shore line proves that in this northern district reclamation has not yet commenced.” Forest remains have been located ft mile and a-half from the spot where they were first noticed in 1916, and it fairly clear that, many centuries ago, the bed of the Waitemata was dry land heavily clothed in virgin bush with probably a river running through it to the sea. Although showing signs of great age tie timber of the roots ■ recovered by the Hapai from beneath the clay is in a good state of preservation, and there are several large logs covered with remnants of bark. The concretions were dug out of the thick bed of clay which has remained ■undisturbed beneath a layer of sea inud for ages.