688 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



that each tribe of Maori were in dread of other tribes — this 

 alone would cause a variation in the dogs of different tribes 

 by preventing free intermixture. If we find no fossil remains 

 of man or dog seemingly of any great age in New Zealand 

 this will not go to prove the impossibility of a great southern 

 continent inhabited by gigantic moas, the dog, and man. 

 The great and extensive plains or low lands are now buried 

 under the sea, together with all marks of their inhabitants, 

 for the present islands of New Zealand would, under former 

 conditions, be a very high range of mountains, covered in 

 perpetual ice ; and, supposing any living thing to die in 

 these ice-covered regions, the dead carcase would be mingled 

 with the ever-moving glacier, and carried onward to the lands 

 which are now at the bottom of the sea. The disappearance 

 of this continent may be coeval with that great convulsion of 

 nature which occurred in the Northern Hemisphere, when the 

 climate of Siberia was so suddenly altered that the living and 

 gigantic mammoth was frozen in ice-blocks, which have re- 

 mained as evidence to the present day. We have proof that 

 man and the mammoth lived in the same country and at the 

 same period of time in northern Europe, and where we find 

 the evidence of man's existence there also is mostly found 

 the remains of a canine form. The dog would seem to have 

 always been the companion of man, or a feral animal uti- 

 lised by man as a food-product. 



I am sorry to say that I am denied the pleasure of again 

 reading Mr. Colenso's paper on the native dog of New Zea- 

 land, Transactions, vol. x., and therefore must refer back to 

 my remarks thereon, which were published in Transactions, 

 vol. xxii. 



" Mr. Colenso quotes from the writings of George Forster, 

 ' A good many dogs were observed in their canoes, which 

 they seem very fond of, and kept tied with a string round 

 their middle. They were of a rough, long-haired sort, with 

 pricked ears, and much resembled the common shepherd's cur. 

 They are of different colours, some spotted, some quite black, 

 others perfectly white.' " 



Now, Mr. Colenso assumes that a common shepherd's cur 

 must needs be a dog of small size, the result of cross-breeding 

 between a sheep-dog and a small breed — presumably a terrier. 

 Have we any evidence in English records that shepherds were 

 accustomed to use mongrel dogs to work sheep in preference 

 to using the pure-bred sheep-dog for the same purpose ? I 

 think the correct answer here is, Certainly no ; such would be 

 absurd. Therefore George Forster saw a similarity between 

 those New Zealand dogs and the English sheep-dog. 



" At Tolago Bay," Cook says, " the dogs were small and 

 ugly." This I take to be a special remark, referring to a 



