322 KETIEEMENT, TO 1897 : DAKWINIANA, ETC. 

 The following refers to a pamphlet by Sir W. L. Buller. 1 

 To the Same 



June 25, 1895. 



I am sending you by post a pamphlet on Darwinism 

 and other matters by an old friend of mine and capital 

 Naturalist, who is author of a splendid work on New Zealand 

 Birds. 



The pamphlet has charmed me, reminding me of White's 

 Selborne. I have only one criticism upon it — which is as 

 to the necessary correlation, see p. 102, of the huge forms 

 of Palaeozoic life with a tropical vegetation, and the assump- 

 tion that this is so now ; mentioning the Siberian Mammoth, 

 the Irish Elk, &c, as having had tropical climates, whereas 

 the food found in the teeth of the Mammoth, and stomach 

 I believe, is of the leaves of the Birch and Willow now found 

 in the Tundras, and there is no reason to suppose that the 

 vegetation of the bogs in which the Irish Elk is found differed 

 from that now prevailing — and Elephants abounded at the 

 Cape of Good Hope when first discovered, or rather when 

 first occupied. Also the Greenland Whale feeds on the 

 Arctic Beroe, a very minute sea jelly-fish. 



1 Sir Walter Lawry Buller, K.C.M.G., F.R.S., of Canterbury, N.Z.; 

 Resident Magistrate and Native Commissioner in various districts of New 

 Zealand ; served in the Maori war (medal and mention in despatches) ; a 

 distinguished ornithologist ; Governor of the Imperial Institute ; author of 

 The Birds of New Zealand and other scientific publications. 



