30 Mantell on Fossil Remains from New Zealand. 



his reach, and went into the interior of the country and located 

 with the natives, for the purpose of collecting specimens of the 

 then unknown parts of the skeletons, and of ascertaining whether 

 any of these gigantic birds were still in existence; resolving, if 

 there appeared to be even a remote chance of this being the case, 

 to penetrate farther into the interior and obtain one alive. The 

 information he gathered from the natives offered no encourage- 

 ment to follow up the pursuit, at least in that part of the country, 

 but tended to confirm the idea that the gigantic struthious birds 

 had become extinct, the last of the race having, like the Dodo, 

 been destroyed by man within a comparatively recent period ; 

 and that if any of the species whose bones are found in a fossil 

 state are still living, it is probable they will be those of small 

 size, and related to the Apteryx, the living diminutive repre- 

 sentative of the colossal bipeds that once trod the soil of New 

 Zealand. 



With these introductory remarks, which appeared to me ne- 

 cessary to place the history of the discovery in a clear point of 

 view, I propose, first, to notice the geological conditions under 

 which these fossil bones appear to have been accumulated ; sec- 

 ondly, to describe in general terms the most remarkable features 

 of the collection before us ; and lastly, to offer some observations 

 on the bearing of these facts on that difficult problem, that " mys- 

 tery of mysteries" as it has been emphatically termed by Sir 

 John Herschel, the appearance and extinction of certain types of 

 organic beings on the surface of the globe. 



I. Geological position of the deposits in which the bones occur. 



In attempting to arrive at a correct knowledge of the relative 

 geological age of the deposit in which the bones sent to this 

 country were found imbedded, I have experienced considerable 

 difficulty, in consequence of the unsettled state of the orthogra- 

 phy of the various localities, and also from the indefinite manner 

 in which the collectors describe the places whence they obtained 

 the specimens. Unfortunately the letter from my son containing 

 details of this nature, and to which in his subsequent correspon- 

 dence he refers me tor the necessary information, has not reached 

 me. I endeavored to mark on a map of New Zealand all the 

 localities whence bones had been obtained, but several places 

 mentioned by the collectors are not inserted. I will therefore 

 briefly state the circumstances under which the bones are descri- 

 bed as occurring by the gentlemen who have transmitted them 

 to this country. 



The Rev. W. Williams, in his letter of Feb., 1842, states, 

 11 that none of the bones have been found on dry land, but are all 

 of them from the beds and banks of freshwater rivers, buried 

 only a little distance m the mud. The largest number are from 

 a small stream in Poverty Bay, the River Wairoa, and from many 







