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 Struthionidce, &.S, 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 Struthionidce, 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 gi'eat 

 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 glacial 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 



