Sept. 1 6, 1 875 J 



NATURE 



441 



cessful synthesis of a vegetable principle yields at the same time 

 a product of great technical value, as in the case of the production 

 of artificial alizarin. 



By visiting in turn the principal centres of British industry, 

 this Association brings together men engaged on pure and on 

 applied chemistry. We who come as visitors may hope that 

 our papers and discussions here may bring fresh interest in the 

 science, if not actual hints for practice, to those whose art or 

 manufacture is based on chemistry. In return, the most interest- 

 ing communications the Section has received have not unfre- 

 quently been the descriptions of local industries ; and there is 

 no part of our hospitable reception more welcome and more in- 

 structive to us than the opportunities which are provided of 

 seeing chemical transformations on a large scale, effected by 

 processes which observation and inventiveness have gradually 

 brought to perfection and with the surprising familiarity and 

 skill which are engendered by daily use. 



SECTION D.— Biology. 

 Depa7 tment of Zoology and Botany. 

 Dr. Hector, chief of the New Zealand Survey, gave a most 

 interesting account of the modes of occurrence of the Moa bones 

 in New Zealand. He used the term Moa in preference to that 

 of Dinomis, because the bones of the New Zealand birds were 

 now divided among so many genera. He cemonsi rated most 

 conclusively that the knowledge of their former existence was 

 not communicated to the Maoris by the Europeans, who deduced 

 their structure from their remains, but, on the contrary, was 

 imparted to the latter by the former. Up to recent times there 

 had been a constant fulfilment of the statements made by the 

 Maoris concerning the localities in which the bones would 

 be, found. He believed there was no hope of ever finding 

 the birds alive, for he himself had been over the whole of the 

 islands very thoroughly without seeing them. Dr. Hector exhi- 

 bited a map of New Zealand on which were denoted all the 

 areas in which Moa bones had been found, and all the localities 

 in which considerable finds of bones had been made, with indica- 

 tions of their condition or surroundings. He found that the 

 country occupied by primeval fore.-ts before the advent of Euro- 

 peans was that in which Moa bones did not occur. His deduc- 

 tion was that they lived in the open and low scrub, in which 

 they could walk. In all this region, within his own memory, 

 the Moa bones were extremely abundant in the South Island, all 

 over the ground ; but these bones were very rarely found in col- 

 lections, for they were usually decomposed and split and warped. 

 In the enormous extent of Sub-Alpine country in the South 

 Island, which was covered by only a light vegetation, large 

 quantities of well-preseived Moa remains had been recently 

 found, associated with remains or reliques of natives. It appeared 

 to him that the natives had pressed up the country for the pur- 

 pose of capturing, killing, and eating the Moas ; and as the 

 natives could not follow them through the sharp bayonet-grass 

 and other underscrub, they seemed to have got at them by setting 

 portions of it on fire, which collected the animals together, often 

 killed them, and accounted for so many of their bones being 

 accumulated in particular spots. And in some of these localities 

 where the Moas were destroyed by fire, little heaps of chalcedonic 

 quartz pebbles, which were their crop-stones, were found, each 

 heap associated with the remains of one bird. And this fact, of 

 their being the crop-stones, had been conclusively proved by the 

 discovery of a carcase crushed and decayed so as to be unfit for 

 anatomical purposes, but containing within the thorax just such 

 a little heap of pebbles as had been described. The second 

 chief mode of occurrence of Moa bones was in the turbary 

 deposits and desiccated swamps, occurring in almost all the 

 valleys leading to the east coast. One notable deposit was at 

 Glenmark, where the remains of a terrace at a higher level had 

 been cut through by the stream, leaving a large turbary deposit 

 on the shoulders of the hill on both sides. Here were found a 

 great number of Moa bones, without any associated Maori imple- 

 ments. Out of this place had been got bones sufficient to cover 

 twice the area of the Section Room. They occurred mixed 

 together, and above, below, and among great accumulations of 

 drilt-wood, which were ten or twelve feet deep over many acres. 

 The bones got out of that deposit indicated at least 1,700 indivi- 

 duals, which had either been carried down and smothered in floods 

 or which had died naturally and been carried down by the water. 

 Similar deposits occurred in caves, and in turbary deposits on 

 the coast, which were exposed below high-water mark, showing 



that there had been comparatively modem submersion ; but there 

 were no marine deposits above, and they rested on a denuded 

 surface of the latest Tertiary beds. There seemed to have been 

 an uninterrupted submergence of New Zealand since the time 

 when the Moas were first developed in such large numbers ; and 

 there had been no considerable re-emergence of the lanl since 

 then. Another mode of occurrence of Moa bones was wherever 

 the country was favourable for Maori camps, on the sheltered 

 grassy plots and links, or among the sand-hills near. They were 

 associated with their cooking-hollows, and with stone imple- 

 ments, which, however Neolithic in aspect, were similar to those 

 used now by Maoris. It had been said that the oldest Moa 

 remains were those associated with the ancient moraines of the 

 upper valleys, but these were the great natural roads up which it 

 was very hkely that some Moas would travel and leave their 

 remains there. In caves the Moa bones were found resting on 

 the stalactitic shelves, perhaps cemented by a little carbonate of 

 lime. They were hardly ever found on the lower surfaces of the 

 caves ; and he believed they had mostly gained access to the 

 caves by falling through the upper chasms. He had evidence 

 that sheep in modem days fell through in the same way, and 

 their bones were found similarly situated in the caves. The 

 earliest traces of the Moas that had been found were footprints 

 at Poverty Bay, occurring in a soft pumice sandstone, within six 

 or eight inches of the upper surface. Many blocks had been 

 procured with these undoubted footprints. The lower surface 

 of each depression was formed of very fine micaceous sand, but 

 it was filled up with much coarser green quartzose sand. After 

 the birds had passed, the impress'ion had been filled up by blown 

 sand. Undoubtedly a true bird-bone had been found in Tertiary 

 deposits in New Zealand, but he was inclined to think it 

 belonged to a gigantic extinct Penguin. — The President testified 

 to the value or Dr. Hector's address by saying that he had never 

 till that time really understood the modes of occurrence of Moa 

 bones. — Prof. W. C. Williamson said that scientific workers who 

 had advice and sympathy readily accessible to them could knovr 

 little of the energy and enthusiasm required to sustain the solitary 

 individual who had to labour without meeting a scientific or even 

 an educated man for weeks and months. Dr. Hector was a 

 conspicuous example in this respect, and deserved all the honour 

 his fellow-workers in England could give him. 



Dr. Carpenter gave a summary of the results of his investiga- 

 tions into the nervous and generative systems of comatula. He 

 described as a nervous cord the cord existing in the axial hole I'f 

 the skeletal segments, which Miiller had described as a vessel. 

 No cavity was to be found in it, and in a favourable plane of 

 section branches from it to the tentacular muscles were detected. 

 Although this cord was destitute of the ordinary structure and 

 insulating material of nerves, that was explicable by the fact that 

 only one kind of muscle had to be affected, and that all the 

 maiscles acted s multaneously, in flexion of the arm. The cord 

 to each arm came off from the curious five-lobed organ in the calyx 

 below the perivisceral cavity. This was determined to be the 

 central nervous mass by the following experimeat. A living 

 comatula was taken, and the visceral mass was turned out. A 

 needle was thrust into the supposed nervous organ, and in- 

 stantly all the arms were coiled up to their full extent, and were 

 gradually relaxed. This was repeated several times. A curious 

 generative axis had also been discovered in the shape of a cord 

 passiniT through the middle of the nei-vous centre, and through 

 the visceral mass to spread into a plexus around the mouth. 

 Thence branches wert given off to the arms and pinnules, and 

 the ovaries and testes were directly connected with these cords 

 as axes. Dr. Carpenter said that these facts were such as to 

 necessitate the separation of the crinoids much further from the 

 rest of the echinoderms than hitherto. In fact, he considered 

 they had little in common beyond the calcareous network of the 

 skeleton. In conclusion he said nat he had learnt from a trust- 

 worthy observer that after a recent hurricane in the West Indies 

 a vast number of Pentacrini had strewed the shore of Barbados , 

 in all stages of growth, from one inch to eighteen inches in 

 length ; but unfortunately no naturalist was at hand to reap the 

 rich harvest. 



Dr. I. Bay ley Balfour read a papc On the Flora and Geological 

 Structure of the Maicarene Islands. He said that in Bourbon 

 there was a great contrast between the flora of the older north- 

 western portion and that of the south-eastem district within the 

 area formed by the volcano now acting. Here the soil was very 

 barren, with only a few composites and other plants that flourished 

 in a dry soil. The flora was not most closely allied to that of 

 Africa, but rather to that of India and the Indian Archipelago. 



