Notices of New Books. 7869 



of flowers. Tt was named Nestor productus. When Mr. Gould 

 visited Australia, in his researches into the Ornithology of those anti- 

 podeal regions, he found the Nestor parrot absolutely limited to 

 Philip Island, a tiny satellite of Norfolk Island, whose whole circum- 

 ference is not more than five miles in extent. The war oi extermina- 

 tion had been so successful in the larger island that, with the excep- 

 tion of a few specimens preserved in cages, not one was believed to 

 survive. Since then its last retreat has been harried, and Mr. J. H. 

 Gurney has published in the 'Zoologist' (Zool. 42t)8) the dirge of the 

 last of the Nestors."— P. 79. 



This subject of the gradual but certain extinction of species, one 

 after another, is not only of great interest, but is of far wider extent 

 than naturalists generally suppose; the genera Notornis, Nestor, 

 Strigops, Apteryx, Casuarius and many others are as certainly fol- 

 lowing in the wake of Deinornis, Palapteryx and Didus, as these have 

 followed the pre-hisloric inhabitants of this earth's surface. 



Spontaneous production of Fish. — " It is a curious fact that the 

 pools, reservoirs and tanks in India and Ceylon are well provided with 

 fish of various species, though the water twice every year is perfectly 

 evaporated, and the mud at the bottom becomes converted into dust, 

 or takes the condition of baked clay, gaping with wide and deep 

 clefts, in which not the slightest sign of moisture can be detected. 

 This is the case with temporary hollows in the soil, which have 

 no connexiojp with running streams or permanent waters, from 

 which they might be supposed to receive a fresh stock of fish. 

 Two modes of accounting for this strange phenomenon have 

 obtained currency. The one is that received by those Europeans 

 who are content with any solution of a difficulty without too closely 

 testing it; viz. that the fishes fall with the rain from the air. The 

 actual occurrence of such showers rests, as we have jusi seen, on 

 good evidence ; but admitting the fact, it must be a rare phenomenon, 

 whereas the presence of fish in new-made pools is universal. Again, 

 if the rains brought them in such abundance as to stock all the pools, 

 an equal number would fall on the dry ground, which is not pre- 

 tended to be the case. The other accepted solution is that which 

 has received the sanction of Mr. Yarrell, who observes, ' The im- 

 pregnated ova of the fish of one rainy season are left unhatched in 

 the mud through the dry season, and from their low state of organiza- 

 tion as ova, the vitality is preserved till the occurrence and contact of 

 the rain, and the oxygen, of the next wet season, when vivification 

 takes place from their joint influence. This may be fully allowed, 



