474 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



minently stated at only two leaves before my paper on the 

 moa — namely, "Government House, 17th M.iy, 1843. — 

 Present : Sir John Franklin, &c. Three communications had 

 been received from Mr. Colenso, one of November 4th, 1842, 

 with an amended copy of his paper on the moa " {I.e., vol. ii., 

 p. 77)? 



Then the Eeviewer goes on to say, in his note, " In Decem- 

 ber, 1839, Professor Owen despatched to New Zealand copies 

 of his first memoir, as printed in the Proceedings of the Zoo- 

 logical Society, and they were received before the close of 

 1840. Mr. Colenso's paper is dated May 1, 1842. . . . Dr. 

 Mantell, who takes no account of the influence of the disperr 

 sion of the first memoir in New Zealand between 1839 and 

 1841-42, seems only to be acquainted with Mr. Colenso"s paper 

 as printed in the Annals of Natural History in 1844." He had 

 previously said in the body of his review, " Copies of the 

 memoir were despatched forthwith to many residents m New 

 Zealand, and special letters were addressed to the few per- 

 sonally known to Mr. Owen, strongly urging the prosecution 

 of inquiries among the natives as to the existence of such 

 fossil or semi-fossil remains" (I.e., p. 402). Assuming, of 

 course, that Professor Owen's first memoir had been received 

 here in New Zealand, that it had been distributed, and that I 

 had seen it. Sec. — ergo, my paper ! 



The Eeviewer does indeed say, " The statement of these 

 facts detracts nothing from the merit of Mr. Colenso's obser- 

 vations; " but no other person, I suppose, reading them could 

 so think with him. On the contrary, if all that might be 

 reasonably inferred therefrom was true, then, of course, my 

 paper and myself should be dealt with accordingly. 



Now, I positively affirm that I not only never saw Pro- 

 fessor Owen's first memoir, but that I had never once heard 

 of it, neither did I ever hear of any resident in New Zealand 

 who had seen it. And it must not be overlooked that, re- 

 siding as I was then in the Bay of Islands, in a part of New 

 Zealand where no moa -remains had ever been found, and 

 where the name was unknown, very far away from Cook 

 Strait, the head-quarters of the New Zealand Land Company, 

 and also distant from Auckland, the seat of Government, with 

 only few and far-apart means of communication between our 

 localities, and that only by small coasting-vessels, I was not 

 in tlie way of receiving or hearing information of that 

 kind. 



But (apart from this negative statement) those assump- 

 tions and insinuations of the Eeviewer ai-e best answered by 

 Professor Owen himself in his own words (please note par- 

 ticularly dates) : — 



" A fragment of bone was brought for sale to the College 



