43 



communicated. The fresh water shells did not present a Tery inTitini^ 

 field to the naturalist in the early history of icience, but they were not 

 long studied before they were found to possess features worthy of 

 attention. A great impetus had been given to the study by Mons, 

 Draparnaud, a young French surgeon, whose brilliant career was stopped 

 all too soon by the insiduous ravages of consumption. His work forms 

 a standard on the subject, as it is a model of accurate observation, careful 

 delineation, and cliarming interest. It was owing to the knowledge thus 

 given that the eminent osteologist Baron Cuvior was so much aided in 

 his determination of the fossils of Montmartre, Paris. There bones were 

 found associated with shells, and the bones might have been supposed to 

 belong to marine drift, but an attentive consideration of the shells showed 

 them to be frosh water, and of a kind whose habits of life were now known. 

 This tended materially also to explain the conditions under which the 

 extinct mammals of the bed existed. Much light had been thrown on 

 the conditions of life in the coal formation from the freshwater and 

 land shells found embedded in it. The reverend gentleman went on 

 to describe generally the natural history of that order of Mollnsca known 

 as I'lilmo hranchiata, that is Molluscs with lungs and gills, breathing 

 both air and water. Water is their natural element, but they can also live 

 out of it. As they live in creeks and waterholes, which are liable to 

 diminish or totally dry up in certain seasons, they must have means for 

 withstanding a drought, or the order would soon perish. They are there- 

 fore provided with an apparatus which is part lung and part gill. The 

 organ is a respiratory sac through which the blood flows, and is aerated 

 in a network of minute vessels, and it is filled with branchial plates or 

 lamellje for the purpose of extracting the necessary oxygen from water. 

 He called attention to the observation of Draparnaud, who said that if we 

 consider the very email number of points by which the animal is attached 

 to the shell, one is astonished to understand how so fragile a covering 

 could withstand the action of external agents, and at the same time pre- 

 serve its solidity, its colour, and its transparency, especially as upon the 

 death of the animal it bleaches and exfoliates on slight exposure. We 

 must then admit some sort of intercommunication between the shell and 

 the animal which it encloses. We must admit also that it is animated 

 with vitality, although it appears to our eyes, which are too feeble to un- 

 ravel its interior structure, as if it were mere inert matter." The reverend 

 gentleman then read the introduction to his paper. 



The Governor observed that the remarks made by the Rev. Julian 

 Woods, as to the stone implements, showed the care that should be taken 

 not to allow preconceived theories to hurry our conclusions in matters 

 of fact. He thought that it was very easy for even very able, honest, and 

 painstaking men to miss facts that lay just to the right or left, or close 

 behind them, whilst they were looking straight at their theory. The lapse 

 of a very few years often was sufficient to cover up and bury facts or 

 traditions that might be of great value. An instance of this had occurred 

 in Kew Zealand. A very eminent scientific man there had argued, in 

 a most interesting paper, that the race who made and used the stone knives 

 and implements found in the kitchen mounds on the Rakaia together with 

 moa bones were probably a race distinct from, and anterior to, the 

 Maori, and of immense antiquity ; that the moa {Dhwrnis) itself had 

 been for ages an extinct bird ; that there was no reliable evidence from 

 Maori sources of the recent existence of the moa {Diiwrnis), still less any 

 trace at all of any tradition of the newly-discovered Harpagon Moorei, the 

 gigantic eagle, or bird of prey, whose bones had very recently been 

 discovered at Glenmark. These general views had been combated by 

 Dr. Hector, and also contradicted by tiir G. Grey and others whose testi- 

 mony was of greater weight upon native ovidouco that oven Sir George's. 



