336 Transactions. — Zoology. 



get authority to prepare a descriptive catalogue for the use of 

 visitors and students. This would involve a little expense, but 

 it must be borne in mind that the Museum, as a whole, con- 

 tains collections of considerable value, and that in the absence 

 of a catalogue the general public has no conception of what 

 the colony possesses in this respect. I do not know what the 

 estimated value is in money, but I should say certainly not 

 less than £30,000 ; and all this accumulated through the ex- 

 ertions of Sir James Hector, who had nothing but the small 

 miscellaneous collection of the New Zealand Society to start 

 with. The truth is that the Colonial Museum is not large 

 enough for the exhibition of the treasures it contains. When 

 it was built, some thirty years ago, the various collections 

 were in their infancy, and very few additions have since been 

 made to the building. Now that an effort is being made to 

 recover, for educational purposes, tlie beautiful site on which 

 the Central Criminal Gaol stands, it might be well to con- 

 sider whether the site of the present Museum should not be 

 sold at a good price, and the proceeds applied to the erection 

 of a really suitable building on a portion of the fourteen acres 

 comprised in this Mount Cook reserve. 



Before passing on to my notes on the species selected for par- 

 ticular mention this evening, I should like to say that the Legis- 

 lature is to be congratulated on having by special enactment 

 extended a very necessary protection to our splendid Wood- 

 pigeon, by making the whole of the year 1896 a close season. It 

 is to be hoped that the Government will not make too free a use 

 of its discretion under the Act as to relaxing the restriction in 

 native districts. I may mention, too, that Sir James Hector 

 has performed an important service to science by obtaining 

 legal protection for that unique representative of an ancient 

 fauna, the Tuatara Lizard. To take or kill one of these animals 

 is now punishable with a heavy fine. This course was ren- 

 dered necessary by the wholesale way in which Tuataras were 

 being collected for trade with Europe and America. This 

 may seem a digression from the subject-matter of my paper ; 

 but the Tuatara is the foster-brother, so to speak, of several 

 species of Petrel, inhabiting the same burrows and breeding in 

 adjoining chambers ; and, although it belongs to a lower order 

 in the animal kingdom, it is known to possess the most bird- 

 like skeleton of all existing reptiles. 



These introductory remarks will prepare yoii for the 

 ever -recurrent record of increasing rarity of many of the 

 species treated of in the following notes. Their ultimate 

 extinction within measurable time is a matter of certainty, 

 except in so far as a renmant may be preserved through 

 the protective action of the Government to which I have 

 referred. 



