42 



EECEEATIVE SCIENCE. 



felt. Tlie Pelagic Malays, as their annals 

 prove, however, had a cannibal propensity. 

 Be this as it may, the giant moas have hut 

 recently passed away ; but, as with the great 

 megatherium and the mylodon, monsters of 

 the sloth tribe in the primeval forests of 

 America, they have left a few pigmy repre- 

 sentatives, lingering on the verge of extinc- 

 tion, but not yet quite extinct. 



New Zealand presents us with a wingless 

 gaUinule — a semi-water bird — a sort of moor- 

 hen (notornis), probably the remnant (if in- 

 deed it still survive) of other wingless birds 

 of the same type. JVew Zealand seems to 



have been the dilecta sedes of brevipennate 

 birds. But our attention is at present called 

 to the pigmy representative of the moas. 

 There still exists a bird called the kiwi, or 

 kiwi-kiwi {Aptcryx Atistralis), and the fol- 

 lowing notes were made upon a living 

 specimen, which came under our immediate 

 inspection. It was a singular, unbird-like 

 looking creature. Huddled up in the dark 

 comer of an appropriated room, there we 

 beheld it crouched close to the ground, with 

 its long cane-like beak, supporting crutch- 

 ways the head and anterior portion of the 

 body. Annoyed by the light which we let in 



upon it, it became restless, altered its posi- 

 tion, and then, raising itself upright after the 

 fashion of a penguin, it moved hurriedly to a 

 more secluded spot. It was then that its re- 

 markable length of body became manifest, 

 which in its previous crouching and rounded 

 attitude was not observable. Its actions 

 during its endeavours to regain obscurity 

 were vacillating, as if it did not clearly dis- 

 tinguish surrounding objects, nor even the 

 surface of the floor over which it essayed to 

 make its way. We at once perceived that 

 its diurnal vision was both imperfect and 

 limited — it seemed bewildered. Having 

 gained, like a thing suddenly roused up from 

 torpor, its dusky retreat, it again assumed 

 its strange attitude of repose, but less com- 

 pletely than before ; for, although it crouched 

 and pressed the point of its beak to the floor, 

 it occasionally raised the head a little, inas- 

 much that though the beak pointed down- 

 wards, it did not form a prop. Its disturbance 

 seemed more to arise from the unwelcome 

 light than from our presence ; it exhibited 

 no terror, no extraordinary agitation, for, 

 vacillating as its movements were, it did not 

 dash wildly about, nor did it utter any sound 

 or cry ; in fact, it exhibited the extreme of 

 apathy. "We did not see it during the night, 

 but we were assured that it then roused itself 

 up, and bored continually into a large arti- 

 ficial earth-mound in quest of worms, of 

 which it had an abundant supply. Of its 

 intelligence we formed but a low opinion. 

 Do not creatures of the lowest cerebral 

 development — we speak here of mammals — 

 pass away the first, and give place to a higher 

 race of representatives? Was the densely 

 fur-clad mammoth of Siberia equal to the 

 " reasoning elephant " of Ceylon, or of inter- 

 tropical Africa P 



On such a subject all speculation is futile 

 — only we know that the marsupials, once 

 extensively distributed, are now confined to 

 Australia, their stronghold, and to America. 

 In these we have the lowest of mammalian 



