18 Transactions. — Zoology. 



palseontological times the same conclusions as those derivable, 

 but with more effect, from a study of living animals. No 

 fossil mammal has yet been discovered anywhere in New 

 Zealand. That renders still more striking the exceptions 

 which I have just pointed out. How are we to explain the 

 existence of these four isolated species, each one representing 

 one of the sub-types of the class, and not having been pre- 

 ceded by any other belonging to the fundamental group ? It 

 is a curious fact, and one not to be met with elsewhere. 

 Nowhere else, in fact, do we see a whole class of animals 

 totally wanting in the fossil fauna, and only represented in 

 the existing fauna by a number of insignificant species be- 

 longing to distinct orders. On the contrary, there always 

 exist affinities more or less close between the past and the 

 present in the animal kingdom. We know, indeed, that these 

 resemblances are advanced every day as arguments in favour 

 of the doctrine of evolution. 



The New Zealand fauna then presents a singular exception 

 to one of the hitherto most generally accepted facts, rendering 

 it thereby extremely difficult to admit the existence of excep- 

 tions of this kind. One was naturally impelled to ask whether 

 some accidental phenomenon had not occurred here to disguise 

 the natural features ; whether these animals — the dog, the rat, 

 and the two bats — belonged really to the New Zealand fauna, 

 or were merely immigrants brought from a foreign land into a 

 country in which they were previously unknown. 



The presence of Chiroptera may easily have been attributed 

 to the fact of accidental distribution, resulting from gales such 

 as are still met with in these parts. ( 5 ) But the presence of 

 the two terrestrial mammals has remained for a long time un- 

 explained. This curious problem of zoological geography was 

 only solved after Sir George Grey had discovered, translated, 

 and published the historical songs which have furnished infor- 

 mation as valuable as it is curious on the first origin of the 

 Maoris. He tells us that in leaving Hawaiki for the land 

 newly discovered by Ngahue the emigrating chiefs took with 

 them the animals and plants the utility of which had been 

 taught them by experience. The dog and rat figure in the list 

 of these treasures of the native colonists,^) and attest to this 



(5.) The Zosterops lateralis, Latham, originally an Australian bird, 

 was brought in this manner to New Zealand, and to the small Campbell 

 Island. It did not exist in the Chatham Islands before 1801. At that time 

 it suddenly appeared after a storm. (" Rapport but l'Exposition faite au 

 Museum des Objets d'Histoire Naturelle recueillis par MM. De L'Isle et 

 Filhol," par A. de Quatrefages ; "Archives des Missions Scientifiques et 

 Litteraires," vol. v., p. 24.) 



(G.) "Polynesian Mythology," 1855 ("The Emigration of Turi," pp. 

 212 and 214 ; " The Emigration of Manaia," p. 228). I have analysed these 



