S14, * THE ZooLocist—OcToBER, 1876. 
ascertained species has now reached 155, and of most of them the life-history 
has been exhaustively written. The 6 lizards have since increased to 14, 
not including one or two doubtful species. The list of fishes was then 92; 
it now comprehends 163 species, and fresh discoveries are being constantly 
made. Although the list of Mollusca even then included 240 species, the 
number has now increased to 502; the Radiata and Crustacea have been 
largely multiplied, while the list of insects has increased to nearly a thousand 
recorded forms. In Botany large and important additions have been made 
in every section, chiefly through the zeal of local collectors in both islands. 
Dr. Hooker’s ‘ Handbook of the New-Zealand Flora,’ published in 1864, 
enumerates 935 species of flowering plants, to say nothing of the immense 
variety of ferns and lycopods, mosses and jungermannias, lichens, fungi, and 
sea-weeds. The pages of our ‘Transactions’ contain many subsequent 
additions by Kirk, Buchanan, Travers and other local botanists. Of the 
Physical Geography and Geology of the country comparatively little was at 
that time known, while a great part of the interior was a terra incognita. 
Even the Southern Alps had not been explored, and nothing was known of 
those glaciers since discovered by Dr. Haast, which are said to surpass in 
magnitude and grandeur the well-known glaciers of the European Alps. In 
the field of Paleontology, however, even before that date, some important dis- 
coveries had been made. Mr. Mantell, the first scientific explorer of the moa- 
beds of Waikouaiti and Waingongoro, had forwarded to Europe a magnificent 
collection of fossil remains, which, after ‘ exciting the delight of the natural 
philosopher and the astonishment of the multitude,’ found a fitting resting- 
place in the galleries of the British Museum, and were, in due course, minutely 
described by Professor Owen in several elaborate memoirs read before the 
Zoological Society of London. Later years have yielded, in the South Island, 
fresh treasures to an almost unlimited extent ; and the group of colossal moa- 
skeletons brought together through the energy of Dr. Haast, and now to be 
seen in the Canterbury Museum, is, I think, one of the most striking and 
interesting exhibitions on this side of the Line. The principal recent dis- 
coveries are :—the wonderful saurians, from the Waipara beds and elsewhere, 
so fully described in last year’s volume of ‘ Transactions’; the gigantic bird 
of prey, Harpagornis Moorei, from the tertiary deposits at Glenmark; the 
great wingless goose, Cnemiornis calcitrans, from Otago; and the giant fossil 
penguin from the tertiary rocks on the west coast of Nelson—all of which 
have been exhaustively dealt with in papers read before the various local 
societies and published by the Institute.” 
Wild Cats: period of Gestation (Zool. S.S. 5038)—I am sorry I cannot 
give further satisfactory information regarding the wild cats (S. 8. 4825), - 
which Mr. Alfred Heneage Cocks asks for. I applied to the owner, who still 
