Moas and Moa-hunters. 125 



extent of the lands composing New Zealand. This rendered 

 the exceptions which I have just indicated even still more 

 striking. How are we to interpret the existence of these four 

 isolated species, each representing one of the subtypes of 

 the class, and not preceded bj any other belonging to the 

 fundamental group ? We have here a strange fact with no 

 analogy elsewhere. Nowhere else do we see a whole class of 

 animals entirely wanting in the fossil faunas and only repre- 

 sented in the existing fauna by an insignificant number of 

 species belonging to distinct orders. On the contrary, there 

 always exist more or less close affinities between the past and 

 the present in the animal creation. We know that these 

 relations are even every day invoked as so many arguments 

 in favour of the transformist doctrines. 



The New-Zealand fauna therefore presents a unique excep- 

 tion to one of the most general facts hitherto ascertained. 

 Now it is very difficult to admit the existence of exceptions of 

 this kind. One is therefore naturally led to inquire whether 

 some accidental phenomenon has not intervened here to mask 

 the natural facts — whether this dog, this rat, and these bats 

 really belong to the New-Zealand fauna, whether they are 

 not simply colonists introduced, it matters not how, into a 

 country to which they were originally strangers. 



The presence of the Chiroptera might easily be ascribed to 

 a fact of accidental dissemination resulting from a few blasts 

 of wind, as has been demonstrated at the present day in the 

 same regions *. But that of the two terrestrial mammals has 

 long remained unexplained. 



To solve this curious problem of zoological geography Sir 

 George Grey has had to discover, translate, and publish the 

 historical songs which have furnished equally precise and 

 curious information upon the first origin of the Maoris. 

 Through him we have learned that on quitting Hawaiki for 

 the new country discovered by Ngahue the emigrant chiefs 

 brought with them the plants and animals of which experi- 

 ence had taught them the utility. The dog and the rat figure 

 in the list of these treasures of the colonist f? and still attest 



* Zosterops lateralis (Latham), a bird originally inhabiting Australia, 

 has been canied in this way to New Zealand and into Campbell Island. 

 It did not exist in the Chatham Islands until 1861. At this time it 

 appeared suddenly after a storm (" Rapport sur I'exposition faite au Mu- 

 seum des objets d'histoire naturelle recueillis par MM. de L'Isleet Filhol," 

 par A. de Quatrefages, ' Archives des missions scientifiques et litteraires,' 

 tome Y. p. 24). 



t ' Polynesian Mythology/ 1855 ; ' The Emigration of Turi,' pp. 212, 

 214; 'The Emigration of Manaia,' p. 228. I have analyzed these docu- 

 ments and aU those relating to the same set of ideas in a work entitled 



Ann. (& Mag. N. Hist. Ser. 5. Vol. xiv. 10 



