Henry O. Forbes—Chatham Isles and the Antaretie Lands. 227 
‘was no other than a species of Aphanapteryx, a large and remark- 
cable member of the rail family, which was contemporary with 
the celebrated dodo in the Island of Mauritius. That island had 
been till then the only place in the world where the Aphanapteryx 
was known to exist, and where it had with the dodo preserved its 
fading race down to about two hundred years ago, when both of 
these groups passed away and perished for ever from among living 
things. In the Chatham Islands I found the remains of the Apha- 
napteryx in kitchen middens of the Morioris, showing that in this 
region of the world also it had survived down to comparatively 
recent date, just as the moa had in New Zealand. ‘To find bones 
of this bird was, therefore, the main object of my visit to the 
‘Chatham Islands, but I had in view also to search for evidences 
of the former existence there of the moa, the apteryx and the 
weka, characteristic birds of the New Zealand fauna, and to indicate 
the value and importance to natural and to geographical science, 
of their occurrence in this island, is the chief reason of my paper 
Oeste (am iia ras vacT at spoT au PEM UM AERSM seb Tadine) AP a eee Rae 
“Deduced from the study of the distribution of species, it has 
come to be an accepted law that, ‘Whenever we find that a con- 
siderable number of the mammals (or what is practically the same 
thing, of flightless birds) of two countries exhibit distinct marks 
of relationship, we may be sure that an actual land connection, or at 
all events an approach to within a very few miles of each other, 
has at one time existed’ (Wallace, ‘Island Life,’ 2nd ed. p. 74). 
Now, besides this remarkable Aphanapteryx, I gathered on the 
Chatham Islands the bones of other birds now extinct there, but 
identical with species now living in New Zealand, and some of 
them characteristic of that island, such as the Kea, that peculiar 
parrot which has so changed its diet within recent years that 
forsaking fruits, it attacks and kills the sheep by eating through 
their backs into their vital organs; as well as the flightless wood- 
hen, a species apparently identical with that of South Island 
(Ocydromus australis), a species of owl (Glaucidium Nove Zelandia) 
and the smaller of the two species of New Zealand hawk. In 
addition to these I obtained a species of swan which once lived 
(though now extinct) in New Zealand; and the tuatara, a curious 
and ancient form of lizard absolutely confined to the main group. 
The occurrence in the Chatham Islands of these species, some of 
which, like the flightless wood-hen, and the Kea among birds and 
the tuatura lizard, which could not have crossed the intervening 
500 miles of sea with the organs of locomotion they possess, proves 
that the Chatham Islands must have had at one time a continuous 
land connection with New Zealand. Its geological structure shows 
it to be a continental island, for though essentially volcanic, it 
possesses sedimentary rocks of paleozoic, secondary, and tertiary 
age, and its flora, which is most closely related to that of its larger 
neighbours, confirms this opinion as well as the shallowness of 
the intervening sea where the whalers it is said found soundings. 
Confined now to one of the smaller, though once widely spread 
