608 Pivceedmgs. 



on the denuded surface of a marlstone formation of Miocene age. The 

 gravel was being worked by liydraulic sluicing, and the gold was chiefly 

 found in the bottom layer, which also contained the bones. These were 

 all in rolled or water-worn fragments, and, as they had a honeycombed 

 structure, a considerable amount of gold had lodged in them, which the 

 miners obtained by crushing and washing the bones. From his know- 

 ledge of the locality, he believed the gravel to be quite recent, and 

 formed long after the lignite and auriferous gravels of Pleistocene age 

 which occurred in the same district. The bones were probably of the 

 species Dinornis robustus, and were as follow : 3 dorsal vertebrae ; 

 1 sacrum ; 2 fragments of tibias, of different birds ; 1 fibula of left side ; 

 1 ischium and acetabulum — left side ; 1 ischium, right side ; 1 ischium, 

 right side of a smaller bird ; 3 ribs ; 1 fragment of sternum : so that 

 probably several birds are represented in the collection. 



Mr. Travers said he knew the locality. It yielded rich auriferous 

 gravels that had been worked for the last thirty-five or forty years, but 

 under great difficullies, owing to the absence of water, without incurring 

 a large expenditure. Now he believed the property had changed hands, 

 and £70,000 was to be spent in developing the field. 



Mr. Hudson asked if moas were supposed to have had external rudi- 

 mentary wings. He could not understand why birds should lose their 

 wings because they did not require the use of them. 



Sir James Hector replied that some forms of the moa had very small 

 rudiments of a wing. Disuse led to the diversion of nourishment from any 

 organ to other parts of the body that were used in excess. No doubt the 

 development of the ponderous legs of the moa was effected at the expense 

 of the blood- supply diverted from the wings. The interesting point was 

 that in New Zealand there were not only many kinds of true Stmthio- 

 nidce, which is a family in which the breast muscles for flight were not 

 developed, but there were also many other families of birds that else- 

 where had power of flight, but yet in New Zealand had lost that power 

 and the mechanism required for it. 



3. " Notes on the Vegetable Caterpillar," with specimens, 

 by Mr. Charles Fitton ; communicated by G. V. Hudson. 



The author contributed a number of fine specimens of the 

 dried caterpillars, and also a number of live ones, with notes 

 as to their mode of occurrence ; but these all proved to be of 

 species that were well known not to be true vegetable cater- 

 pillars, the moth or imago state of which had still to be dis- 

 covered. 



Mr. Maskell wished to say only a few words, not about the speci- 

 mens or the notes, but by way of a mild protest against the manner in 

 which this subject, originally brought forward by him in 1894, had been 

 ignored in favour of the discussions so frequently taking place as to this 

 caterpillar itself. In 1894 he incidentally brought in this insect as an 

 illustration, and only an illustration, of what he, and, as he gathered at 

 the time. Sir J. Hector, Mr. Kirk, and Mr. Hudson also, considered a 

 most important question — the assistance given to tree- and fruit-growers 

 by certain fungoid organisms which killed injurious insects. That ques- 

 tion had since been taken up very seriously in many other countries, but 

 in New Zealand, because Sir W. BuUer chose to raise what he (Mr. 

 Maskell) said was a perfectly trivial and unimportant issue, the really 

 important question had been obscured, and, although they had had this 

 vegetable caterpillar constantly brought forward, nobody seemed to care 

 for anything but the merest trivialities in connection with it. It was 

 necessary to point out, in the interests of tree-growers in the colony, that 



