CoLENSo. — Status quo. 475 



of Surgeons in 1839. . . . Drawings of it, with my de- 

 scriptions and conclusions, were submitted to the Zoological 

 Society, London, November 12th, 1839. . . . There was 

 some hesitation in the Publication Committee as to the ad- 

 mission of the paper, with the plate, into the Transactions. 

 Ultimately the admission of this paper into the 

 Transactions, with one plate, was carried at the committee, 

 the responsibility of the paper ' resting exclusively with the 

 author.' On the publication of the volume in 1838''' {sic) one 

 hundred extra copies of the paper were struck off, and these I 

 distributed to every quarter of the Islands of New Zealand 

 where attention to such evidences was likely to be attracted. 

 In this distribution I was efficiently aided by Colonel William 

 Wakefield, at that period zealously carrying out in New Zea- 

 land the principles of colonisation advocated by his brother, 

 Mr. Edward Gibbon Wakefield; by J. E. Gowen, Esq., a 

 director of the then recently-established ' New Zealand Com- 

 pany ; ' by my friend Sir William Martin, the first Chief 

 Justice ; and by the Eight Eev. Dr. Selwyn, the first Bishop 

 of the Islands." (" Memoirs on the Extinct Wingless Birds 

 of New Zealand," vol. i., pref., pp. iv., v.) 



I copy again from Professor Owen's large work: ''Ad- 

 dendum. — J. E. Gowen, Esq., a director of the New Zealand 

 Company, has obligingly forwarded to me the subjoined indi- 

 cation of a further discovery of the bones of the Dinornis from 

 a new locality in New Zealand : Extract of a letter from 

 Colonel William Wakefield to J. E. Gowen, Esq., dated Wel- 

 lington, 19th SciAemher, 1843. — ' I received lately your letter 

 respecting the moa, ^vith Professor Owen's notice. I have taken 

 steps to procure some of the bones, which are much larger 

 than the one represented in the sketch.' " 



This, I think, sufficiently answers the Eeviewer's hasty 

 conclusion as to "the influence of the dispersion of the first 

 memoir in New Zealand between 1839 and 1841-42 " — that 

 is, as far as what had been made known and done throughout 

 that period by the New Zealand Land Company. 



The Chief Justice, Sir William Martin, arrived in New 

 Zealand by the ship "Tyne," in 1841. His residence was at 

 Auckland ; and I have good reason for believing that both 

 he and the officers of the Land Company had vastly too much 

 of higher and more important public matters to attend to. 

 The Bishop of New Zealand, with the Eev. W. C. Cotton, 

 did not arrive in New Zealand until June, 1842, after my 

 paper on the moa was written. 



* This is an error : it may be 18.39, but is more likely (cousidering the 

 former date mentioned by Professor Owen, and what followed — including 

 " the publication of the volume " of 1839) to be 1840. 



