Bibliography. 201 



We well remember how disheartening was the effect upon our mind 

 of Professor Owen's opinion, above alluded to, adverse to the ornithic 

 character of the footmarks of New England. The man whom we 

 considered as better qualified to judge on such a point than any one in 

 Europe, had decided against us, and for reasons which were certainly 

 most weighty, viz. the enormous size of the tracks and the improba- 

 bility that animals of so high an organization as birds existed so early. 

 True, eminent men were with us, and we could not give up our opin- 

 ion ; but we trembled for it, and greatly feared that we should not live 

 to see it established — for we could not derive from ichnology or any 

 other part of geology any answer to these objections, particularly the 

 last. Little did we imagine that light would come from the distant 

 island of New Zealand, and as an incidental result of missionary labors. 

 But that part of the world seems to be a sort of Atlantis still left above the 

 waters, while the rest of the ancient earth has gone down beneath them, 

 and save so far as geology has restored it, into the depths of oblivion ; 

 but the peculiar Fauna and Flora of Australasia form the connecting 

 link between the present and past economies of organic existence. A 

 single fragment of bone from that region, touched by the magic wand 

 of comparative anatomy, not only brings before us the Dinornis of more 

 recent times, but almost restores those congeneric races that far, very 

 far back in the world's history, trod the shores of estuaries almost an- 

 tipodal to New Zealand. Truly distance either in time or space is 

 nothing in nature ; and the correlation of animal structures, so beau- 

 tifully developed by Cuvier, Owen, and others, is but a specific exam- 

 ple of the great law of harmony, that links together by a golden chain 

 the great and the small, the past, the present, and the future, through- 

 out the universe.* H. 



2. Ehrenherg' s Observations on the. Fossil Infusoria of Virginia 

 and Mart/land, and comparison of the same with those found in the Chalk 

 Formations of Europe and Africa. — In the monthly report for February, 

 1844, of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, we find a notice of a memoir 

 by Ehrenberg, giving the results of his examination of specimens of fos- 

 sil infusoria, received by him through Prof Bailey, from the localities dis- 

 covered by Prof W. B. Rogers at Piscataway, Maryland, and by Mr. 

 Tuomey at Petersburg, Virginia, together with a comparison of the 



* A portion of the skull of Moa has been sent to England from New Zealand. 

 The beaks unfortunately are wanting ; the conformation of the head resembles 

 that of the Dodo, and from the large development of the olfactory nerves, Mr. 

 Owen with much probability supposes its habits resembled those of the Apteryx ; 

 but that its wings were less rudimentary. — Extract from a -private letter from Dr. 

 Mantell to the Editors, Dec. 2, 1844. 



Vol. XLviii, No. 1.— Oct.-Dec. 1844. 26 



