200 BIRDS OF NEW ZEALAND. [CH. IV 



of the islands shows deposits of ancient sedimentary rocks, 

 besides Jurassic, cretaceous, and tertiary strata; it is thus 

 evidently a continental island, though it exhibits much 

 volcanic material of ancient as well as of more modern 

 date. 



The fauna of New Zealand is highly remarkable ; 

 though the island is of the continental type there are 

 hardly any mammals, no large mammals at all ; only two 

 bats and a rat the latter being almost certainly an im- 

 portation are known to exist in New Zealand. Rumours 

 of a larger and, conjecturally, a carnivorous mammal have 

 been from time to time floated ; but the domestic cat may 

 be responsible for the footprints, assigned to a new and 

 isolated type of New Zealand mammal. The bats however 

 are not of universally distributed species ; one of them is 

 an Australian form, Scotophilus tuberculatus ; the other is 

 a peculiar genus, Mystacina tuberculata. The birds are 

 very characteristic ; the most salient type is of course the 

 but recently extinct Dinornis and its allies ; there were 

 until well within the historic period a large number of 

 species of Dinornithidse. The existence or at any rate 

 the abundance of these often huge birds is ascribed to the 

 absence of mammals of carnivorous mammals that is to 

 say. The curious genus Apteryx is found in New Zealand 

 and nowhere else; of this genus there are about four 

 species. It is regarded by Fiirbringer as allied to the 

 Rails, but to be a low stock of the Ralline birds, a little 

 more modified however than the Cassowaries, Emus and 

 the rest of the so-called Struthious birds ; the Apteryges 

 are placed by the same author in close proximity to the 



