10 
tell, had made so great an addition to the materials for developing 
the natural history of New Zealand. 
The memoir was accompanied with numerous drawings of the 
specimens described, which will form plates 52—56 of the third vo- 
lume of the ‘ Transactions.’ 
On the conclusion of Professor Owen’s communication, Dr. Man- 
tell expressed his opinion, that although the specimens formerly sent 
to this country were obtained from the beds of rivers and mountain- 
streams, and were regarded by the gentlemen who collected them 
as of very recent date, in reality they belonged to a period of as 
high antiquity, in relation to the surface-soil of New Zealand, as 
the diluvium containing bones of the Irish Elk, Mammoth, &c. to 
that of England. He observed that Mr. Colenso, Mr. Taylor, and 
Mr. Williams, who sent to England the bones figured and described 
by Professor Owen in the ‘ Zoological Transactions,’ vol. iil., agree 
in this remarkable fact, that in some places, where the loamy marl in 
which their specimens were found was observed in situ, it was covered 
by several feet of strata of marine and freshwater sand, gravel and 
silt. The bones collected by Mr. Walter Mantell, among which were 
the crania and mandibles that formed the subject of Professor Owen’s 
present communication, were all found imbedded in a loose pure 
sand, formed in a great measure of magnetic iron and minute crystals 
of augite and hornblende, the detritus of volcanic rocks. This sand 
has filled all the cavities and cancelli of the bones, but is not in any 
instance consolidated together: hence the bones are in the most 
beautiful state of preservation, and the most delicate processes entire. 
Dr. Mantell conceives that this bed of voleanic sand is a continu- 
ation of the deposit of sandy loam which occurs at the embouchures 
of the rivers along the west and east coasts of the North Island, in 
the localities that yielded the bones sent over by Mr. Williams and 
Mr. Taylor; and that in the higher regions of the same river-valleys, 
the detritus brought down by the mountain-streams from the volcanic 
chain whence they originate, is unmixed with the clay and silt of 
the lower alluvial tracts; for all the streams in these parts of the 
North [sland rise from the lofty ridges of Mount Egmont and Ton- 
gariro. Dr. Mantell alluded to the fact, that along the sea-coasts and 
on the banks of the rivers Eritonga, Waibo, &c., there are horizontal 
terraces of boulders of trap-rocks fifty feet high; and that the small 
rocky islands of trachyte off the coast bear marks of wave-action to 
the height of 100 feet above the present sea-level. He mentioned 
other facts of a like nature in confirmation of his opinion, that since 
the Moas existed the surface of the country has been elevated many 
feet above the level of the sea, and that the present rivers and moun- 
tain-streams are flowing through channels cut irto the ossiferous 
deposits ; in like manner as the rivers of Auvergne flow through the 
newer tertiary marls and limestones containing bones of Mammalia, 
and those of England through the diluvial clay and loam in which 
