OCR Text |
Show 448 lSLAN D LIFE. (PAUT 11. abu ndance-m. recent fluv1·a t1. 1e J opos1' ts , 1·n old native cookinn- o d th f: Ce of the oTound-that places and even scattere on e sur a o compl~te skeletons of several of them have been ~ut together, illustrating various periods of growth from the chiCk up to .the adult bird. Feathers have also been found attached to P?rtwns f the skin as well as the stones swallowed by the b1rds to ~ssist diges,tion, and eggs, some containing portions of the embryo bird; so that everything confirms t~e s~atemcnts of tho Maoris-that their ancestors found these btrds 111 abundance on the islands that they hunted them for food, and that they finally exte;minated them only a short time before ~he arrival of Europeans. I Bones of Apteryx are. also .found fossil, but a ppa~·ently of the same species as the livmg b1rds. How far back m geolorrical time these creatures or their ancestral typos lived in New b Zealand we have as yet no evidence to show. Some specimens have been found under a considerable depth of fluviatile deposits which may be of Quaternary o~ ev~n of Pliocene age; but this evidently affords us no approx1mat10n to the time required for the origin and development of such highly peculiar insular forms. Past Changes of New Zealand deduced from its Wingless Birds. 1 The recent existence of the Moa and its having been exterminated by the Maoris appears to be at length set at r~st by the. statemen~ of Mr. John White, a gentleman who has been collect~n?.matenals f~r a l~1stor! ef the natives for thirty-five years, who has been 1mtiated by the~r pn ests L?to all their mysteries and is said to " know more about the lustory, hab1ts, and customs of th~ Maoris than they do themselves." His information on this subject was obtained from old natives long before the controversy o.n the subject arose. He says that the histories and songs of the . Maons abound in allusions to the Moa, arid that they were able to gtve full u.ccounts of "its habits, food, the season of the year it was killed, itf> appearance, strength, and an the numerous ceremonies which ;vere enacted by the natives before they began the hunt, the mode of huntmg, how cut up how cooked, and what wood was used in the cooking, with an account of ' its nest and how the nest was made, where it usually h·v e d , &c . " T wo pages are ~ccupied by these details, but they ate only given from memor_Y, and Mr. White promises a full account from his MSS. Many of the dctmls given correspond with f acts ascertained from the discovery of native cooking places with Moa' s bones ; and it seems quite incredible that such. an elaborate and detailed account should be all invention. (See Tmnsactwns o.f the New Zealand Institttte, Vol. V[Il. p. 19.) C HAP. XXI.] NEW. ZEALAND. 449 -It has been well observed by Captaiu Hutton, in hi::; interesting paper already referred to, that the occurrence of such a number of species of Struthious birds living together in so small a country as New Zealand is altogether unparalleled elsewhere on the globe. This is even more remarkable when we consider that the species are not equally divided between the two islands, for remains of no less than ten out of the eleven ~{nown species of Dinornis have been found in a single swamp m the South Island, where also three of the species of Apteryx occur. The New Zealand Struthiones, in fact, very nearly equal in number those of all the rest of the world, and nowhere else do more than three species occur in any one continent or island, while no more than two ever occur in the same district. Thus, there: appear to be two closely allied species of ostriches inhabiting Afriea and South-western Asia respectively. South America has three species of Rhea, each in a separate district. Australia has an eastern and a western variety of emu, and a cassowary in the north ; while eight other cassowaries are known from the islands north of Australia-one from Ceram, two from the Aru Islands, one from Jobie, one from New Britain, and three from New Guinea-but of these last one is confined to the northern and another to the southern part of the island. This law, of the distribution of allied species in separate areas -which is found to apply more or less accurately to all classes of animals-is so entirely opposed to the crowding together of no less than fifteen species of wingless birds in the small area of New Zealand, that the idea is at once suggested of great geographical changes. Captain Hutton points out that if the islands from Ceram to New Britain were to become J'oined toO'ether we b I should have a large number of species of cassowary (perhaps several more than are yet discovered) in one land area. If now this land were gradually to be submerged, leaving a central elevated region, the different species would become crowded together in this portion just as the moas and kiwis were in New Zealand. But we also require, at some remote epoch, a more or less complete union of the islands now inhabited by the separate species of cassowaries, in order that the common ancestral form which afterwards became modified into these G G |