88 Transactions. — Zoology. 



size more rapidly than the females, who were handicapped by 

 such large eggs." Professor Hutton suggests that the reverse 

 of this obtained in the case of the Moas ; but there is no 

 evidence of that. After a critical examination of all the 

 evidence afforded by the bones and their distribution, he says, 

 ''Evidently Anomaloptcryx and Palapteryx are the oldest 

 forms ; but if Palapteryx had wings it could not have been 

 derived from the wingless Anomaloptcryx ; and, if the birds 

 were increasing in size, Anomaloptcryx could not have been 

 derived from Palapteryx."* Exactly so ; but on my hypo- 

 thesis these difficulties disappear, and the supposed conditions 

 are in harmony with it. In this connection I may mention 

 the curious fact that, although Anomaloptcryx didiformis is 

 one of the smallest of the Moas, scarcely exceeding in size the 

 common Bustard, it had proportionately the largest skull of all 

 the Dinornithida. Commenting on this, Professor Owen 

 remarks that, if the peculiarly nutritious roots of the common 

 fern contributed, together with buds or foliage of trees, to the 

 food of the various species of Moa, the concomitant gain of 

 power in the locomotive and fossorial limbs does not appear 

 to have called for a proportionate growth or development of 

 brain or of bill. 



As with the Kiwi, it would seem that the development of 

 the Moa was downwards, or in the way of degeneration, and 

 the restriction of its range to small insular areas would doubt- 

 less favour this dwarfing process. 



One can understand how in process of time the various 

 species of Kiwi now known to us have become evolved from 

 the parent stock by means of natural selection and the sur- 

 vival of the fittest, operating under well-established natural 

 laws. Any divergences of character, however small to begin 

 with, long continued and persisted in, would account for any 

 number of so-called species in various parts of the country. 

 For, a species — what is it ? What does the name denote ? Of 

 what use is it to science except as an artificial definition, and 

 for the greater convenience of systematic classification? 



But the great difficulty in any theory on the subject is to 

 account for the presence of the Grey Kiwi on the west coast of 

 both Islands. Our knowledge of its existence in the North Island 

 rests on a skin brought to me in a fresh state by Mr. Morgan 

 Carkeek, who obtained it just below the snow-line on the 

 highest of the Tararua Eanges, where, he states, he could have 

 collected many more. For the present, 1 confess that the 

 presence of this species in the North Island is very perplexing. 

 One solution that suggests itself to my mind is that it may 



* " On the Moas of New Zealand," by Captain F. W. Hutton, F.R.S., 

 Trans. N.Z. Inst., vol. xxiv., p. 149. 



