INTRODUCTION, xl 
The organic remains of the most recent deposits of the 
North Island, which are most probably contemporary 
with the post-pliocene formations of Australia and Eu- 
rope, are referable to an apparently extinct genus of 
Struthious birds, having the nearest affinities to the Ap- 
teryx. The remains of this genus (Dinornis) appear to 
be very abundant, notwithstanding the stupendous stature 
of some of the species.* 
It is reported that a large 
Dinornis still exists in the South Island of New Zealand ; 
and some of the species may have been living in the 
North Island, when the human aborigines first set foot 
there. But the bones which have reached me from that 
Island, although retaining much of their animal matter, 
are more or less impregnated with ferruginous salts, and 
may have lain in an argillaceous soil for as long a 
period as some of the latest extinct Mammals of Aus- 
tralia, South America and Europe. Not a trace of 
a fossil quadruped has been found in New Zealand ; 
but our present knowledge of the living and the last- 
exterminated Faune of the warm-blooded animals of that 
small but far distant and isolated portion of earth, shows 
that the same close analogy existed between them, as has 
been exemplified in the corresponding Faune of larger 
natural divisions of the dry land on the present surface of 
this planet. 
Additional facts, and the means of extending our com- 
parisons, by the collection of the fossils of distant lands, are 
most desirable in order to precisely define the laws of the 
geographical distribution of the Mammalia of the older 
* IT estimate the Dinornis ingens to have stood nine feet, and the Din. 
giganteus ten feet,in height. See Zoological Transactions, vol. i. part 3; in 
which, also, the peculiar and suggestive geographical distribution of other existing 
and extinct Struthious birds is discussed, p. 268, e¢ seq. 
