﻿140 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



extensive families of plants "wliicli ai'e totally unrepresented in the museum — 

 I mean the mosses, lichens, etc. Some of these are very iateresting, and nearly 

 all are very beautiful, and will well repay the trouble of collection. There is 

 one thing in connection with our bush which not only the botanist but every 

 lover of nature must regret, and that is the rapid rate at which it is disappear- 

 ing. A few short years and the only forest left will be patches here and there 

 in inaccessible places, where it would not pay to remove the trees. It is an 

 interesting subject for speculation, too, as to what influence this clearing away 

 of the forest may have on the climate of the coimtry. 



It is rather singular that here we have no native mammals to look for. In 

 various places, rabbits, rats, and mice, and their natural enemy the cat, are not 

 unfrequent ; but for the aboriginal rodent, the Kiore, we may now look in vain. 

 In the eai-ly day of the gold rush, they were not uncommon in the interior, and 

 used to be caught and eaten by the diggers under the name of Maori rabbits ; 

 and if any yet exist, it can only be in the far away mountainous country of 

 the south-west. The only mammals now to be found are marine — seals, 

 porpoises, etc. Two species of seal ai-e represented in the museum, specimens 

 having been beautifully mounted by Mr. Purdie ; but a couple of porpoises 

 would be a decided acquisition, and now that whale fishing is revived on 

 the coast, the skeleton of one of the smaller sorts would be valuable as a type 

 of the rest. While I am on this head I may here allude to one of the most 

 patent wants of the museum — neither the Crustacea, nor the Mollusca have a 

 place there. There are a few shells — a Pinna, a Turbo, and Haliotis, and there 

 is a small collection made by Dr. Buchanan, I think at Lyell's Bay, Wellino-- 

 ton. Crustaceans abound on our coast. From the active and predatory cray- 

 fish down to a minute shrimp, there are many that sport a long tail ; while 

 the short-tailed ones, from a large solitarj^-living spider crab down to a little 

 mite of a thing, no bigger than a pea, are abundant everywhere. The edible 

 crab — the partan — so large and plentiful in the old country, is represented here 

 by a little tasteless thing about three inches by two, but of precisely the same 

 colour and habits. With regard to the Mollusca, the shells are neither so 

 remarkable in colour or form as those found on the islands to the north ; but 

 nevertheless there are many beautiful species, and a collection for the museum 

 should form one of our earliest attempts. It is a pity that there is always so 

 much surf breaking on our shores, as by this means many of the finest shells 

 are seldom got whole, being pounded to pieces in coming ashore. Still, after a 

 storm, and the heavier the better, when there is a lot of keljD thrown up, there 

 are always a few of the deep water shells to be got among the roots. There 

 are also a few in the fresh waters of the district, and a rather fine lobster 

 inhabits most of the streams. The museum contains only two si^ecimens of 

 Badiata — a sun-star and an ecJdnus ; there are many others to be oot • while 



