CocKBUKN-HooD. — Kluc Zealand a Vost-<jlacial Centre of Creation. 5 



the mountain gorges sufficiently to cause them to ch'op their winter-gained 

 loads; " Piscium et summo genus htesit ulmo," may in the glens u.nder 

 Mount Kosciusko be translated, the oxen remained in the lofty gum-trees. 



Very frequently when the accumulations of snow after severe winters 

 disappear under the summer sun, cattle are found j&xed in the branches of 

 the tall trees in the narrow, deep ravines, filled up with drifted snows, in 

 which they sank — which may readily be imagined, seeing that these drifts 

 are sometimes 300 yards deep — in the upjoer gorges of the Indi river, 

 as stated in the account given by my venerable friend the Eev. W. B. 

 Clarke, F.E.S., who, with so much care and arduous labour, explored these 

 wild and difficult regions. There are no evidences whatever, nevertheless, 

 of their having gone through a colder period than the present. The view 

 may be taken that this, one of the oldest of existmg lands — part of it is as 

 ancient as old New Zealand, of which but little remains — was an inde- 

 pendent "centre of creation" in which the progress of development has 

 not in its prevailing forms of life advanced beyond that point reached 

 elsewhere in early geological eras. In this island continent " we find 

 ourselves at home " with our earliest ancestors, "the beaked animals," the 

 Ornithorhynchus and the Echidna; here are to be seen, hopping about, our 

 somewhat nearer ones the rat-like marsupials, similar to those of the early 

 tertiary epoch, our certain progenitors of the seventeenth stage or genera- 

 tion. We have always known that man was made of the dust of the earth, 

 but through what forms that dust had previously passed, we had not been 

 precisely informed until now. It may be satisfactory to many to have their 

 proved pedigree put before them by Professor Haeckel, at aU events many 

 noble families will feel assured that it is at least as correct and authentic as 

 that of their modern ancestors placed before then- fellows in the pages 

 of some genealogical dictionaries. 



As well as on the land, individuals of very antique aspect yet Unger 

 also near its shores and in its rivers : the Trigonia and Cestracion of meso- 

 zoic days, and that strange creature of most ancient lineage the Devonian- 

 looking Ceratodus. It may be urged that these are but examples of the 

 persistent recurrence of pecuHar forms under the obligation of the law 

 which governs the process of evolution ; or it may be held that they present 

 instances of the tendency to revert under the potency of the same law, 

 circumstances being suitable, to original types even after the lapse of untold 

 ages. Six-legged cats, dogs and other creatures with such abnormal 

 characteristics, are alleged even by some to be merely extreme cases of 

 atavism — i.e., to show clearly the derivation of the mammalia from, or at 

 least their common genetic origin with the Myriapoda, and their alliance to 

 the ivy and other clasping plants. 



