Buller. — Illustrations of Darwinism. 101 



the smallest of the Snipes, is an inhabitant of the Chatham 

 Islands, where it is apparently very plentiful, Mr. Eothschild 

 having, as he informs me, received from his collector, in one 

 lot, fifty-four specimens. Sir James Hector has recorded two 

 specimens from New Zealand, but it is evidently only a 

 straggler with us. Gallinago aucklandica appears to be con- 

 fined to the Auckland Islands, Gallinago tristrami to Anti- 

 podes Island, and Gallinago huegeli to the Snares. It will 

 te seen therefore that these island-species are very sedentary ; 

 and they have no doubt acquired their distinctive characters 

 through long isolation. Whether they are accepted by all 

 ornithologists as true species or only as local varieties does 

 not affect in the slightest degree the force of our argument in 

 favour of the creation of new forms by a process of descent 

 with modification. But I have probably pursued this branch 

 of the subject quite far enough. There is another aspect of 

 the question upon which I should like to say a few words 

 before I close. 



I have always stated my belief that our colossal forms of 

 Dinornis were the most ancient and were the first to become 

 extinct. Those on which the Moa-hunters feasted (as attested 

 by the remains now found in the old kitchen-middens) were 

 confessedly of a smaller stature. Probably the very last to 

 disappear was the small Mcsopteryx didinus. In 1878 Mr. 

 Squires, of Queenstown, obtained and sent to the British 

 Museum the head, with a continuous part of the neck, of this 

 species of Moa, with the trachea enclosed and covered by the 

 dried integument, and exhibiting even the sclerotic bone-ring 

 of the dried eye-balls ; also the bones of both legs with the 

 feet covered by the dried skin, with some feathers adhering to 

 it, and with the claws intact. Be that as it may, the only 

 representatives of this Struthious race we have at the present 

 day are the diminutive Kiwis, of which I have been treating. 

 This remarkable sequence in the development of animal life 

 on the earth, the larger forms preceding in geological time the 

 smaller, appears to have been universal. The distinguishing 

 feature of the Mesozoic period was the development of Sau- 

 rians of marvellous size. From the Oolitic beds in the Bocky 

 Mountains of North America the remains of huge Dinosau- 

 rians have been obtained, among these being the Atlantosaurus, 

 the largest land animal yet known to have existed on the 

 earth; for Professor Marsh describes it as "having been be- 

 tween 50ft. and 60ft. long, and, when standing erect, at least 

 30ft. high ! " At the present day our largest saurians are 

 crocodiles and alligators. But, coming down to Pliocene and 

 Pleistocene times, we have only to think of the mammoth and 

 the mastodon, the dinotherium and the megatherium, the 

 diprotodon and the Irish elk, and compare them with the 



