• 



42 Man tell on Fossil Remains from Neio Zealand. 



comparison with existing nature within their circumscribed geo- 

 graphical boundary, to have conceived the possibility of such 

 assemblages of animated beings existing contemporaneously with 

 themselves ! In fact, the present geographical distribution of pe- 



culiar types of terrestrial animals and plants, affords as many anom- 

 alies in the relative predominance of different classes and orders, 

 as are to be found in the vestiges of the earlier ages of our planet. 

 From these considerations I think we must conclude, that 

 throughout all geological time the changes on the earth's sur- 

 face, and the appearance and extinction of peculiar types of ani- 

 mals and plants, have been governed by the same physical and 

 organic laws ; and that the paroxysmal terrestrial disturbances, 

 though apparently in the earlier ages involving larger areas, and 

 operating with greater energy than the volcanic and subterranean 

 action of modern times, did not afiect the established order of 

 organic life upon the surface of the globe ; and that throughout 

 the innumerable ages indicated by the sedimentary formations, 

 there was at no period a greater anomaly in the assemblages of 

 certain types of the animal and vegetable kingdoms than exist at 

 the present time. 



Additional Remarks on the Geological Position of the Deposits 

 in New Zealand which contain Bones of Birds ; by Gideon 

 Algernon Mantell, Esq., LL.D., F.R.S., &c. 



Since I had the honor of communicating to the Geological 

 Society a notice of the collection of fossil bones of birds from 

 New Zealand, I have received a letter from Mr. Walter Mantell, 

 dated Wellington, June 18, 1847, containing some details res- 

 pecting the bone deposits and the strata with which they are as- 

 sociated, which are of considerable interest, and confirm in every 

 essential particular the conclusions suggested in my former com- 

 munication. The following are extracts from my son's letter: 



"The principal part of the best specimens I have transmitted to you, 

 I obtained from near the embouchure of a stream called Waingongoro, 

 which lies about a mile and a half south of Waimate in the Ngatiru- 

 anui district. The country hereabout is an elevated table-land, with 

 deep tortuous gullies, through which the torrents and streams take their 

 course to the sea. That of Waingongoro, which is as tortuous as any 

 of them, appears to rise in Mount Egmont (the volcanic ridge which is 

 9000 feet high); indeed it must have its source there, or in the short 

 chain of hills which lies between that mountain and the coast in a west- 

 erly direction ; for in returning to New Plymouth by the mountain 

 road — a forest-track at the back of the volcanic ridge — I must have 

 crossed it, did it rise elsewhere. The Waingongoro evidently dis- 

 charged itself at some distant period into the sea, far from its present 

 embouchure, a* is proved by the existence of a line of cliffs which 





