696 Mr. P. R. Lowe on the 



Chathams to show that since their last emergence (Pliocene) 

 they have been connected Avith any land-area whatever. 

 " On the contrary," he says, " it seems clear that since that 

 period they have never been united even with New Zealand, 

 for not a trace of any of the Dinornithidse, Apteryx, Cnemi- 

 ornis, Aptornis, or any of the flightless bii'ds characteristic 

 of those islands, have been found on them. Moreover, as 

 Dr. H. O. Forbes himself has pointed out, no fragments of 

 the skeleton of Diaphorapteryx are recorded from the ancient 

 laud-mass of New Zealand.^^ It seems clear, therefore, 

 that the Chathams and Aucklands have been separated 

 for a very considerable period from New Zealand, but 

 that, nevertheless, the species of the genus Coenocorypha 

 have been derived from a stock which originally hailed 

 from that land-mass. But it is also obvious that this 

 stock did not arise de novo in the ancient antipodes, and 

 that it must have been derived from a still more ancient 

 and more northerly living stock — in other words, these 

 ultra-southern Sni2)e came originally " radiating from the 

 north." 



On the other hand, there are those who would hold that 

 the great likeness which Strickland's Snipe [Gallinago strick- 

 landi) of the Straits of Magellan and Chile (as well as the 

 other generalised antipodean Snipe previously mentioned) 

 bears to these Chatham Island Snipe points to the supposi- 

 tion that they all came '^radiating from the south." Behind 

 tlie striking similarity of form which exists in the resident 

 Snipe of these isolated and widely separated southern ex- 

 tremities of the Old and New World, looms, they would hold, 

 the ancient Antarctic continent. 



Dr. H. O. Forbes, in an interesting paper read before the 

 Royal Geographical Society in 1893 on the relation of the 

 Chatham Islands to a former southern continent, held, for 

 instance, much the same views. 



Except in its greater size and more Snipe-like colouring, 

 Strickland's Snipe in all superficial (and, for all we know, 

 in all deeper-lying) characters is astonishingly similar to the 

 Chatham and Auckland Snipes. Its tarsus is Rusticoline 

 (scutellate in front, reticulate behind), its legs and toes are 



