A portable magnetic susceptibility meter allows rapid in situ estimation of the magnetite content of granitoid rocks, and hence provides a guide to their 1-or S-type character.Except for some muscovite-bearing granites above about 71 % SiO and some orthogneisses of the Charleston Metamorpbic Group, the susceptibility measurements clearly discriminate between Westland-Nelson granitoids of known Mesozoic (magnetite-bearing, I-type) and Paleozoic (magnetite-free, S-type) age. Although some Mesozoic granites lack magnetite, no magnetite-bearing Paleozoic granites have been recognised.Precise susceptibility measurements of a suite of S-type biotite granites show that their very weak susceptibilities are proportional to modal biotite content. Ilmenite and pyrrhotite in these S-type granites have no measureable affect on susceptibility measurements. Deformation locally reduces susceptibility on an outcrop scale, whereas contact metamorphism/hydrothermal alteration may increase or decrease susceptibility.Aeromagnetic anomalies in the Westland-Nelson region of New Zealand are associated more generally with magnetitebearing I-type granitic rocks than with lamprophyre dikes (and hypothetical magnetic source bodies), and it is considered that several anomalies are due to the granitic rocks, one variety of which is apparently associated with lamprophyre swarms.