420 Proceedings. 
the feathers and microscopic structure of the egg-shell of the Moa by Capt. 
Hutton, which confirms the modern classification that places the kiwi in a 
different class of birds from Dinornis and other Struthionide, as it proves the 
incorrectness of the generally received notion that the kiwi is the living repre- 
sentative of the Moa kind that has remained to the present time, the fact being 
that Struthionide, once so abundant, are no longer represented in the New 
Zealand fauna. 
I will now ask your attention while I make a short reference to the geo- 
logical conditions which prevailed in the New Zealand area at the time when 
the Moas may be supposed to have first appeared. 
Dr. Haast, than whom there is no better authority on this matter, has 
stated that the Moa remains first appear in the glacier period, by which is 
meant, in New Zealand, the period of a former greater extension of the glaciers 
from their mountain sources. 
The condition of New Zealand at this time is a point of great importance, 
if we keep clearly before us the problem that I have already stated as being 
one of the greatest interest to students, of the geographical distribution of 
animals and plants, and that is the period during which New Zealand has 
maintained its insulation from other large tracts of land. 
I regret to observe that in some way the idea has got abroad that New 
Zealand and other southern lands have just recovered from a period of sub- 
mergence, and that arguments based on this assumption have been used 
relative to an alternating of the ocean level between the Northern and Southern 
Hemispheres. 
By others our south polar climate is supposed to have undergone great 
amelioration, and even in Sir Charles Lyell’s latest manual we have the choice 
given to us of either floating ice or land ice as the origin of a boulder-drift, 
supposed to envelop the country, and to correspond in character to the great 
boulder-drift of northern Europe and America. I must protest against this, for 
I am not aware of any evidence of the existence in New Zealand of anything 
analogous to the glacia] drift of the Northern Hemisphere. Our extensive 
ice-formed drifts are all valley deposits, and exactly analogous to the moraines 
in the Himalayas and other tropical mountain ranges. They consist of 
moraines lateral and transverse, most of which occupy vallies radiating from 
our alpine peaks and ranges, while some outlived the drainage system which 
they at one time obstructed, and in process of time have come to form the 
present summit levels, throwing the water in a new direction. But during the 
long period in which the glaciers were more extensive than’ now the shingle 
brought down by the ice-fed torrents was poured out of the mountain gorges 
to form steeply inclined plains flanking the ranges, with a surface fall of from 
35 to 40 feet to the mile. No trace of submergence of the vallies can be 
