314 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



of the toes, were exposed. They dug and washed three days and three 

 nights, and on the fourth day they returned in triumph to Collingwood, 

 followed by two pack-bullocks loaded Avith Moa bones. I must confess that 

 not only was it a cause of great excitement to the people of Collingwood, 

 but also to myself, as the gigantic bones were laid before our view. A 

 Maori bringing me two living kiwis from Rocky River gave us an oppor- 

 tunity to compare the remains of the extinct species of the family Avith the 

 living Apteryx. The observations of M. Haast, made during this search, 

 throAv a new light upon this great family of extinct birds.- He found that 

 according to the depth so Avas the size of the remains, thus proving that 

 the greater the antiquity the larger the species. The bones of Dinornis 

 grassus and inyens (a bird standing the height of nine feet) A\ r ere always 

 found at a lower level than the bones of Dinornis didiformis (Owen) of only 

 four feet high. These gigantic birds belong to an era prior to the human 

 race, to a post-tertiary period. And it is a remarkable, incomprehensible 

 fact of the creation, that Avhilst at the very same period in the Old World 

 elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopotami; in South America, gigantic sloths 

 and armadillos; in Australia, gigantic kangaroos, wombats, and dasyures 

 were living; the colossal forms of animal life Avere represented in New 

 Zealand by gigantic birds, who Avalked the shores then untrod by the foot 

 of any quadruped. 



PRESERVATION OF FOOTPRINTS ON THE SEA-SHORE. 



Mr. Alexander Bryson, in a paper communicated to the Royal Society, 

 remarks that the impressions of the feet of birds and molluscs on Avet sand 

 Avere liable to be effaced by the return of the tide; and that their preserva- 

 tion was owing to dry sand bloAvn into the depressions from the shore, and 

 again covered by a layer of moist sand or mud by the return of the tide. In 

 regard to tracks left by gasterapodous molluscs, he stated that great caution 

 was necessary to distinguish them from those left by Nereids; and instanced 

 the case of a foot-track of a common whelk resembling the marks made by 

 the Crossopodia on the Silurian slates. When the track of the Avhelk is 

 filled up by the dry sand bloAvn into the depression in the line of progress, 

 no difficulty is felt in recognizing it as the track of a gasteropod; but should 

 the Avind bloAv at right angles to the track of a mollusc, a series of setie-like 

 markings Avill be observed to leeAvard, caused by the dry sand adhering to 

 the moist. In this instance, a geologist AA r ould naturally assign the markings 

 to the impression of Graptolites priodon, or sayittatus; and if the wind sud- 

 denly shifted to the opposite direction, another series of setse Avould be 

 found on the other side of the mollusc's track, and the obsen r er would at 

 once pronounce the marks due to a gigantic Crossopodia, or fringe-footed 

 Annelide. 



The author also stated that the so-called rain-marks found on sandstone 

 and Silurian slates Avere formed by Crustacea, and that the cusps, Avhich 

 geologists had supposed were the evidence of the force and direction of the 

 wind during the shower, Avere produced by the wind blowing dry sand from 

 the shore, and causing a raised barrier to leeward of the depression, where 

 there Avas more moisture, and consequently more adhesion to the sand. 

 Edinburgh New Philos. Journal. 



