ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 1, 23 March 1927, Page 10

ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE

RIP VAN WINKLE THE SPHENODON OR TUATARA We call him a Rip Van Winkle because it seems as if life, while carrying all other animal forms swiftly on in the current of development, has passed him by, left him unchanged for millions of years, a creature today preserving the forms and habits of its kind of ages and ages long gone. The sphenodon’s is a distinct family to itself, for whose nearest kindred we have to blast the rocks to find fossils which passed out of creation so long ago that they them-

selves are now part of the rock itself. Perhaps the sphenodon, or the tuatara, as they call this most ancr-Tit of all reptiles, is the sole surviving link with the giant dinosaurs, thostterrible monsters which once possessed and ruled the earth. The remnants of the ancient family few and precious to-day, and still preserve features of ancient life at wnich all naturalists marvel.

Winter comes in New Zealand when the sphenodon’s eggs are but halfway to maturity. That is to say, the baby sphenodon is alive in the egg, yet not sufficiently developed to be hatched. So, when winter arrives, the unborn embryo, instead of dying like a neglected chicken, falls asleep in its shell, and does not break out of the shell till the following spring. Thus it takes thirteen months to hatch a sphenodon egg, whereas some of our birds are hatched in 14 days. Another remarkable feature of this reptile is that it possesses on the crown of its head the remains of a third eye. True, this is sightless, and is now covered by a scale, but there is the evidence of its former use. The functionless organ is still mounted on a stalk, which pierces the bones of the skull, and remains to tell us of the far-off days when the reptiles were three-eyed. When that discovery was made, a world-W'ide search was made by naturalists for similar cases, with the result that remnants of a similar eye in many other orders were found in various lands, and a new" chapter of the past history of an old-time creation was opened. Until the coming of the wild pigs, tuataras swarmed in New Zealand. The pigs ate them by thousands; they practically ate them off the mainland, so that their ultimate sanctuary became a few tiny islands near the coast. Here they sleep through the winter, and bask through the summer —Kip yan Winkle of a long-dead age.