12 REPORT— 1842. 



Report on the present state of the Ichthyology of IVetv Zealand. By 

 John Richardson, M.D., F.R.S., Sfc., Inspector of Naval 

 Hospitals, at Haslar. 



Now that New Zealand has become the adopted home of thousands of our 

 countrymen, whose numbers are daily receiving fresh accessions, and whose 

 efforts are primarily directed to the overthrow of the native forests with a 

 view to their replacement by farm-houses, verdant pastures, rich crops of the 

 cerealia, and the other accompaniments of a successful agriculture ; we may 

 expect that a corresponding change will follow in the distribution of animals. 

 Some will become rare or perhaps entirely disappear, while others, casually 

 or intentionally introduced, and finding appropriate food and protection, will 

 increase, and people the land. It is of importance to zoology that the num- 

 ber, range and habits of the animals should be ascertained and recorded be- 

 fore the din and bustle of civilisation scare them from their native haunts ; 

 and it was with the view of facilitating the execution of such a task, that 

 J. E. Gray, Esq. of the British Museum, and I undertook, on the recommenda- 

 tion of the general committee assembled at Plymouth, to draw up a report, 

 of which the present paper is a part. 



The islands of New Zealand crossing thirteen degrees of latitude, and pos- 

 sessing from their narrowness and their remoteness from continents, a purely 

 maritime climate, are well situated for showing how far the distribution of 

 animals is influenced by an increasing distance from the tropic, independent 

 of other considerations. Several able zoologists have gone to reside in this 

 the most remote of our colonies, and it is to them that we look for an accu- 

 mulation of facts bearing on this question, before the unwearied assiduity 

 and continual progress of the Anglo-Saxon race, and the ravages of the do- 

 mestic beasts of prey which follow in their train, shall have compelled the 

 various species to overpass the demarcations of their ancient ranges, which 

 could have been but little disturbed by the operations of the thinly scattered 

 aboriginal inhabitants. These observations apply more extensively to the 

 birds than to the other vertebrata, for quadrupeds are very rare in New 

 Zealand, Cook having observed only two, the dog and rat, and Polack, in his 

 recently published popular account of the Colony, says that it nourishes no 

 serpents or snakes of any description. Three individuals of the genus Pela- 

 mys were indeed thrown ashore on a piece of timber ; but from the way in 

 which the fact is mentioned, I suppose that they were destroyed by those 

 who witnessed the descent. A large agama (Hatteria, Gray) is known to 

 the settlers by the name of iguana, but it is now scarce, having been nearly 

 extirpated by wild cats sprung from the introduced domestic race. 



Mr. Gray with the assistance of his brother has prepared a list of the birds, 

 and also drawn up one of the reptiles and invertebrata known to inhabit New 

 Zealand ; but he has lately received an accession of specimens which require 

 time for examination, and has therefore found it expedient to defer his report 

 to another year, that he may be able to present it in a more complete state. 

 The fish have hitherto been more neglected than the other vertebrata or the 

 mollusca, and had I designed to draw up an orological report, or to make ex- 

 tended observations on the peculiarities of organization exhibited by the fish 

 which inhabit the seas of New Zealand, I must also have deferred this paper 

 until materials accumulated ; but my object is the much more humble though 

 still useful one of furnishing the naturalists now at work on the ichthyology 

 of those distant seas with a list of the known species and references to their 

 figures and published descriptions. 



It is to the accurate observers who accompanied Cook on his first and 



