CocKBURN-HooD. — Xcic Zealand a Pnst-glacial Centre of Creation. 21 



primordial form, whenever required — granting the possibility of the coming 

 into existence of a body containing an inner principle of life, some 

 mysterious force — that Mr. Bastian's experiments but prove that every 

 atom of what chemists deem dead matter, is pregnant with the power of 

 self-development, merely held in a state of utmost tension, from which it 

 is ready to spring forward into life, when chance is given — discharging from 

 their minds any such "emotional sensation" as the process being in 

 obedience to a creative power — the believers in this i^lace of refuge amidst 

 the ice have to solve the problem how it came to pass that the progeny of 

 the primordial form went through all the stages, which required thousands 

 of millions of years, according to his own teaching, to accomplish before, 

 so successfully in the new centre of creation, New Zealand. 



How the gigantic birds were quickly elaborated from their reptilian 

 progenitors, and these from theirs during the brief space of the post-glacial 

 age. If time is necessary for any important process of evolution, it must 

 have been for this supposed wonderful transformation of the cold-blooded, 

 solid-boned, scale-covered lizard, into the hot-blooded, hollow-boned, 

 feathered bi]-ds, and the latter have certainly flourished in high perfection 

 in New Zealand it will be admitted from most remote times. 



We know from the history of Australia, during late geological ages, 

 that the ancestors of the moas could not have migrated from thence. The 

 connection between New Zealand and the north-east of New Holland, New 

 Guinea, Celebes, the Aru Islands, and other small marsupial strongholds, 

 portions once of the ancient bird-inhabited Pacific Continent, was severed 

 in a far distant era, when the marsupial line of life had not perhaps 

 advanced beyond the assumed stage of its batrachiau infancy. 



In that old land of Oceanica, or Apteryxia we may designate it, the 

 lizard race had already far risen in the scale of being, and if the pedigree 

 be true, some tribes of their feathered descendants had colonized its north- 

 eastern regions, where their representatives remain to this day; one family 

 especially having held its ground well. The emu was not to disappear 

 before the new marsupials any more than its analogue in South America, 

 which probably tells us of a more ancient story still in the history of land and 

 sea ; the cassowary also has remained in tropical Australia, although the 

 nearer ally of the Dinornis, its rival in size, whose remains have been dis- 

 covered by the Eev. Mr. Clarke, F.R.S., had not been able to continue its race. 

 On the mountain tops of the submerged continent, representatives of its 

 most ancient denizens also survive. New Britain, New Ireland, and Ceram 

 have their cassowaries as well as New Holland and New Guinea, and the 

 great southern peninsula was in complete possession of the grandest speci- 

 mens of the ornithic race for long ages after its separation by a wide sea 



