the sea level, whilst Morrinsville is only 86 feet. Consequently a depression of 100 feet would again bring the sea up to those places, or within 20 miles of Hamilton, thus extending the gulf by an area of 250 square miles. Traces of the old coast line may be detected here and there far inland, but at Miranda it is more than usually distinct. Here we have a low flat, generally swampy, extending back from the coast line for a mile to the foot of the hills, which fall steeply to its level, where they form contours exactly like the sinuosities of an ocean beach, whilst at one spot, close to the foot of the hills, is found an isolated rock jutting out from the swamp, pinnacled with wave-beaten sides, through which is a cave or passage so clearly the result of water action as to cause surprise at the absence of the waves which made it. Near, too, lying along the foot of the hills, are to be seen large masses of clay slate rocks, just as one sees along a modern beach. The level of the flat here is about 15 feet above high-water mark, and therefore corresponds with the raised beach mentioned by Captain Hutton as existing on the opposite side of the gulf at Shortland. He says, after referring to a submergence which is proved by finding at a depth of 30 feet kauri gum, pieces of wood, and rotten raupo, and nearer Shortland an old Maori paddle. “It would thus appear that when the alluvium full of boulders found on the top of the hills was forming, the land was 1,000 feet lower than at present, that it then gradually rose until it was at least 100 feet higher than now; and at that time the Thames ran further north than Shortland. The land then sunk to about 10 or 12 feet lower than now, and subsequently has again risen to its present level.” I have been informed that in the great swamps lying between the Thames and Piako are to be found shell banks and sand banks, now several miles from the sea, which formerly marked the high water line at the level the land then stood at. Following the coast northwards from Miranda, the same line of old beaches can be occasionally detected, and in some cases even the old shingle, as rolled by the tide, is visible, but now separated from the sea by long stretches of low-level land and swamps. At Umupuhia, near the mouth of the Wairoa, at about 15 feet above present high water-mark, is a level plain extending through from Waiheke channel to the Wairoa River, which, before the elevation, separated the western head of that river from the mainland, forming an island. Approaching Auckland the line of old sea-level is seen here and there, as at Brown's Island, in Hobson's Bay, the north shore at the Victoria wharf, and at places up the harbour. It is probable that when the sea formed these old beaches there was another entrance to the harbour—namely, by the shallow arm running from Shoal Bay, behind the flag-