New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK'S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, February 14, 1849.

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume V, Issue 369, 14 February 1849, Page 2

New Zealand Spectator, AND COOK'S STRAIT GUARDIAN. Wednesday, February 14, 1849.

In a recent number of the Nelson Examiner we find that our contemporary has endeavoured to defend himself i from the strictures w§ felt called upon to make on an;article, which appeared in that Journal on the establishment of a Legislative Council inUhis Provirice,; condemnatory of the Governor's policy. Our contemporary appears to be nothing, if not critical, and from his fanfaronade at starting; we certainly expected something more substantial by way of rejoinder than what has been vouchsafed to us. It does not require much ingenuity to pick out a few unconnected phrases from an opponent's writings and string them together as our contemporary has done, but this is'not the way to answer an argument ; we need not therefore enter upon the superfluous task of supporting what our contemporary has not attempted to refute. But there is one argument which he has selected for the purpose of a reply, and his answer is so curious that we really must' notice it. We stated that, before representation could be introduced, it was absolutely necessaiy that some plan should be adopted by which the details of representation should first be settled, and the outline which the Governor had sketched out, filled in, and that, as a preliminary step to representation, the present Provincial Legislative Council seemed better adapted for the purpose of adjusting these details than any other plan. But our contemporary has arrived at ■" a far mdre satisfactory conclusion," and considers that the details of representation had better be settled by representatives, and thus conveniently arrives at a conclusion before he has made a beginning. This may appear to him a full answer, but any one able to understand an argument must see that it is really begging the question. In like manner our contemporary for the life of him cannot see any analogy between -a paid and and unpaid nominee. But others will see, though our contemporary cannot, that if the nominees are really (as the faction would represent them to be) puppets, a paid puppet will be more subservient to a Governor's will than an unpaid one, and the fact that those gentlemen, in whose liberal talent and integrity the Examiner so much relies, are still principal members of his Excellency's Government, shows .that they at least have sufficient confidence' in the wisdom of the Governor's plans to lend their willing assistance in carrying them out, and our contemporary by Jbis late recantation appears to agree with them. Our contemporary talks of our having " in more than one instance strangely perverted his meaning," but as he does not find it convenient to adduce any proof of his assertion, this must be taken merely for one of those flourishes in which he delights to indulge. When our contemporary talks so much of " the people," as if those who agreed with him were the only true exponents of the sentiments of the community, we must take the liberty of reminding him that this is the favourite cant of mob orators. Ledru Rollin, Louis Blanc, every leader of a faction, in short, arrogates to himself this title, and yet recent experience shows how far such persons are from really expressing the popular sentiment.

We understand that the New Zealand Company had chartered a vessel, to follow the Ajax, which was to sail positively en the 15th October, for "Wellington and the other southern 7 settlements.

The Perseverance arrived on Saturday, after a fifteen days passage from Hobart Town. We .learn from Gapt. Unthank, the master of the Perseverance, that two days before he sailed, the f*ord Auckland arrived in ninetysix days from" England, .bringing news to the middle of October. ; Smith O'Brienhad j been tried by a special commission and found guilty and was sentenced to be executed; ' Disturbance had also broken out;

again ia France, the Due de Bourdeaux being supported :by the legitimists, While Prince Louis Naipoleon was at the head of another party. Capt. "Unthank unfortu^. nately did not bring any uewjggaiiepj. T^

We have great pleasure in publishing the following interesting paper on the fossil remains of New Zealand Birds, by Dr. Mantell, which is extracted from the last volume of the transactions^, of thfe Geological Society; — . '■■„ :

! On the Fossil Remains of Birds collected in various parts of New Zealand, by Mb. Walter Mantell, of Wellington. By Gideon Algernon Mantell, Esq., LL.D., j F.R.S., Vice-President of the Geological I Society.

It is not a little remaikable that one-©f~the \ most interesting ,pal»ontologieal discoveries ; of our times, namely the former existence of ' a race of colossal Ostrich-like birds .in the | islands of New Zealand, though, made in a British colony, and announced to the scientific world by an eminent British . physiologist, has not hitherto been, brought under the immediate notice of the Txeologicaf. Society of London. I therefore consider myself particularly fortunate in having the.opportunity, through | the researches^ of my eldest son, Mr. Walter Mantell, of submitting for the- examination of the 'Felltfws of this Society, perhaps the most extraordinary collection of the fossil remains of struthious birds that has ever been transmitted to Europe, and which contains the crania and mandibles, egg-shells, and bones, of several xgenera and species, most if not all of which have probably Jong been extinct. The ! first relic of this kind was made known to European naturalists by Professor Owen, in 1839. It consisted of the shaft of a femur or thigh-bone, but a few inches long, and with both its extremities wanting; and this fragment so much resembled in its general appearance the marrow-bonel of an ox, as actually to have been regarded as such by more than one eminent naturalist of this metrbpiblis. And if 'I, were required to select from the nuroerous^and^important inductions of, paleontology, the* one which of all others presents the most striking and triumphant instance of the sagaciousapplication of the principles of^ the correlation of organic structure enunciated by the illustrious Cuvier— the'otfe that may be regai'deH as the experimentutn crucis of the Cuvierian philosophy ,~l would unhesitatingly adduce the interpretation' of this fragment of.Jbone. I know not among all the Tnarvels*~which palaeontology has revealed .to , us, a y more brilliant example of- successful ' philosophical induction — the felicitous prediction of genius enlightened by . profound • scientific knowledge. ' ' * ' The specimen was put Hnto Professor Owen's hands for examination, with the statement '•' thatfifc was found in New Zealand, where the natives have a traditidn that it belonged to a bird of the Eagle kindwhich had become extinct, and to which they gave the name of Movie;?' fand from this mere fragment, and with this meagre history, the Hunterian professor arrived at the conclusion, " that there existed, and perhaps still exists in those distant islands, a race of struthious birds of larger and more colossal stature than the Ostrich or any other known species." This inference was based on. the peculiar character of the cancellated structure of the bone, which differs from that of mammalia, and most closely resembles that of the Ostrich. And so confident was Professor Owen of the soundness of his inductions, that he boldly added, " so far as my skill in interpreting an osseous fragment may be credited, I am willing to risk the reputation for it on this statement ;" and he further remarks, " The discovery of a relic of a large struthious bird in New Zealand is one of peculiar interest, on account of the remarkable character of the existing fauna of those islands, which- still includes one of the most extraordinary and anomaldus^enera of the' struthious order, the Aptertfx ; ,-iind because of the close analogy which Ihe event indicated by the present relic offers to the extinction of the Dodo of the island of the Mauritius. So far as judgment can be formed of a single fragment, it seems probab,le that the colossal, bird of New Zealand, if it prove to be extinct, presented proportions more, nearly resembling those of ,the Dodo, than of any- of the existing Stiwtkionidee." In 1843 the correctness- of I ' these views was confirmed in every essential' particular by a large collection of bones obtained by the Rev. W. Williams, and transmitted to the Dean of Westminster; and" still further corroborated by anothertinteres^ing series brought to England in 1846 by Percy Earl, Esq.; and by the cbljectiori whijeh. forms the immediate^ subject of this communication; w . ' - -> ' - -*' My eldest son, who went to New Ze*land in 1839, and Beetled at WeUinjgton,, ,fc ©ne

Q|,|iis,earlfest- letters to me after his arrival, mentioned that a tradition was .prevalent among the Maories or natives, that gigantic birds, taljer than , a man, were formerly abundautj^royighout tae islands ; and that some oi thej;oldest of the natives averred that $hey f tiad .seen such birds ; and that although much reduced in numbers, some of thcjrace, still 4 «xisted in the unfrequented, and- (inaccessible parts .of the country. They called ihese birds Moa, and affirmed in proof of their statement, that enormous bpnes were occasionally met with in the mud and silt of the .streams; and rivers.; but my son was, unable to obtain any of the bones in question, ; < . Upon learning from me of the discovery of the ' bone described by Professor Owen, he /endeavoured to obtain further informatibtton this [interesting subject; but until B#t&vwhen he resigned an official situation, he'was unable' to follow up his inquiries with saebe'ss. -In the meanwhile the collections oLthe Rev. W. Williams, Mr. Percy Earl, and of- other gentlemen, had furnished the materials from which Professor Owen drew up his two celebrated memoirs on the Dinornis, an extinct genus of tridactyle Strutliious Birds, which were published in the third volume of the Transactions of the Zoological Society. '- In 1846, and at the commencement of 1847, my son explored every known locality of these relics in the North Island within his reach, and went into the interior of the country and located with the natives, for the purpose of collecting specimens of the then Unknown parts of the skeletons, and of ascertaining whether any of these gigantic birds were still in existence ; resolving, if there appeared to be even a remote chance df this being the case, to penetrate farther into the interior and obtain one alive. The information he from the natives offered no encouragement to follow up the pursuit, at least in that part of the country, but tended to confirm the idea that the gigantic struthious birds had become extinct, the 1 last of the race having, like the Dodo, been destroyed by man within a comparatively recent period ; and that if any of the species whose bones are found in a fossil state are still living, it is probable they will be those of small size, and related to the Apteryx, the living diminutive representative of the colossal bipeds that once trod the soil of New Zealand. With these introductory remarks, which appeared tom e necessary to place the history of the discoveVyHn'a clear point of view, I propose/ firstf, 'to' notice the geological conditions under which these fossil bones appe,ar to have been accumulated,; secondly, to describe in general terms the most remarkable* features' of the collection before us ; and lastly, to offer some observations on the bearing of these facts on that difficult problem, that " mystery of mysteries" as it has been emphatically termed by Sir John Herschel, the appearance and extinction of certain types of organic beings on the surface of the globe. ' I. Geological position of the deposits in which the bones occur. — In attempting to arrive at a correct knowledge of the relative geological age of the deposit in which the bones seSnt to this country were found imbedded,, I have experienced considerable difficulty, in consequence of the unsettled state of the orthography of the various localities, and' also from the indefinite manner in which the collectors described the places whence they obtained the specimens. Unfortunately the letter from my son containing details of this nature, and to which in his subsequent correspondence he refers me -for the necessary information, has not reached me. ' I endeavoured to mark on a map of New Zealand all the localities whence bones had been obtained, but several places mentioned by the collectors are not inserted." I will therefore briefly «tate,the circumstances'under which the bones are described^ as occurring by the gentlemen who have'fransmitfced them to this country. Rev. W>. Williams, in his letter of 1842,-states, " that none of the bones have been found on dryland, ,but are all of them from the beds and, banks of, freshwater rivers, buried only a little distance in the mud. The largest number are,,, from a Small stream in, Po.ve.rty Bay, th'e.jriver Wairoa, and from many inconsiderable streams, all of which are in immediate connection with hills of some altitude.'';,. A, mutilated,sranium, described ,by Professor) Owen, was obtained by Mr, Williams,from the, bed of, a mountain stream descending to the coast at Poverty Bay iri the Nbrth Island. iXnolMr^sent overhyW. Swainson, Esq., is from the vicinity of the Bay of Islands'. " Both of these have a ferruginous tint and great weight. 'arising from an irifil-, tration of peroxide of iroi ; butthecancelli of the bone contain only a little of 'the'drjr pow-

dery alluvium of the stream into which the specimens have been washed." The Rev. W. Coienso, who in 1841 — 1842 accompanied Mr. Williams in search of the Moa, has given a very interesting account ~of the circumstances under which the bones were procured in the bed of the Waiapu river by the natives, by whom they were sought to make fish hooks. He states that travelling southward from Poverty Bay, he came within sight of Wakapun'akc, the mountain celebrated among the natives as the residence of the surviving Moas ; but no bones were obtained from thence. " The Maories affirmed that Moas lived there, but admitted that no one had seen any of these gigantic bipeds. The Moas bones were only to.be found after the floods occasioned by^ heavy rains, when they were to be seen after* the, waters subsided, washed up. on the bapks of gravel and mud on the river side ; but none were then to be. procured. I offered large rewards for any that should be met with, and directed them to be taken to Mr. Williams in Poverty Bay. At the base of the mountain is the river Wangaroa, which is a branch of the Wairoa, which runs into Hawke's Bay ; and down this we paddled for some distance, but perceived no bones. Finding that we were willing to pay largely for specimens, a hundred persons set about hunting for them, and brought those they collected to Mr. Williams." Mr. Colenso states, that hitherto (in 1842) bones have only been found within the waters and channels of those rivers which discharge themselves into the southern ocean between the East Cape and the south head of Hawke's Bay, on the east coast of the North Island. .They only occur on the banks of ( gravel, &c, in the shal,lowest parts of the rivers after floods occasioned by heavy rains, and when the waters have subsided to their usual level. " These rivers are in several places at a considerable depth below the present surface of the soil, often possessing a great inclination, as is at once perceived by the rapidity of their currents. They have all a delta of greater or less extent at their mouths, from an inspection of which it is obvious that their channels have considerably changed. The rocks and strata in these localities indicate generally both secondary and ,tertiary formations ; the former consisting of argillace-ous-schist, sandstone, conglomerates, green* sands, &c. ; the latter of clay, marly calcareous tufa, sand, gravel, and alluvial deposits." The true situation of the Moa bones is not known with certainty, but Mr. Colenso infers that they are found in the lowermost tertiary deposit. The localities mentioned by Mr. Colenso lie to the east of the volcanic chain of Tongariro, and the rivers probably have their origin on the flanks of that volcanic region. The collection formed by Dr. Mackellar was from the Middle Island, from a superficial turbary formation on the coast, which was submerged at high tide, and is near the settlement of Waikawaite. Mr. Percy Earl, who obtained his specimens from the same locality, mentions that this deposit, which is ■ overflowed by the sea at high tides, had been covered by a layer of sand and shingle ; but this covering had been swept away by storm-waves a short time before his arrival, and a bed of black peat was exposed, from the surface of which bones projected ; these and other specimens were procured by digging close to the surface, -or at a moderate depth in the peat ; they were all Dinornis' bones. The account given by the Rev. Mr. Taylor of Wanganui, a settlement on the wes-. tern coast of the North Island, near the embouchure of the river of that name, lying to the south of Cape Egmont, as New Plymouth does to the north, is, in substance, as follows ; — , In 1 843 he procured a collection of bones during a journey to Turakina (?), from having observed a fragment of large bone, which induced him to, inquire of tne natives if such relics were to be met with. The Maories pointed out to him several little hillocks of bones,, x scattered here and there over the valley at the mouth of the river, Whaingaihu (?) where the sand had drifted.' Mr. Taylor describes these heaps as being composed of bones of several kinds of Moa, as. though the flesh of the birds had been eaten, and the bones thrown indiscriminately together. The bones were in so friable a state that only the large ones would bear removal ; the smaller ones pulverized in the hand, and below the surface the whole was a mass of decomposed bone. " The subsoil was a loamy, marl, beneath which was a stratum' of clay that chiefly forms' the cljffs 'of ihjs part of the westiprn coast ; it contains nuttierbus marine shelly,' and reEembles in 'appearance thegqlt 6( tlxe south-east of England. I have no. doubt that it "was, when. tEat loamy marl formed $he surface soil that tiie Moa lived; for although jt, is laid bare by, the river sWe^ygt in pth'er;. parts i/ is tckolfy' covered tiy several strata of marine

and freshwater deposits. I have found the bones of the Moa in this bed, not only in other parts of the western, but also in the eastern coast, at the East Cape, and at Poverty Bay. I have not heard of this deposit having been noticed north of Turakina (?). All the specimens sent from the localities above-mentioned, with the exception of those from the South or Middle Island, are in the state of the mammalian bones that occur in in the ancient alluvial deposits of England. They are permeated, and coloured more or less deeply by a solutign of iron, and the cancelli are filled by the mud or silt in which they were found imbedded. They are but little water- worn, and have not suffered much abrasion, ; having, probably been protected by the muscles and soft parts during their transport to the places where they were deposited. In short, their state of fossilization corroborates the accounts given of the nature of the alluvial bed from which they were procured ; they strikingly resemble in this respect the bones of the Irish Elk, Mammoth, &c, of our diluvium, (To be continued J