﻿Wellington riiilosophlcal Society. 363 



The President said tlie cii'cumstance had a most important bearing on the 

 question of the transfusion of species of phmts among the islands of the South 

 Pacific, and that the existence of the drift described by Mr. Hart had 

 already been specially pointed out by his son in the account he gave of the 

 Chatham Islands, printed in Vol. T. of iYiQ Transactions of the Institute, 

 p. 173. 



5. " Preliminary Notes on the Isolation of the Bitter Substance of the 

 ISTut of the Kai'aka Tree {Corynocarpus Icevigata)" by W. Skey, Analyst to 

 the Geological Survey Department. (See Transactions, p. 310.) The author 

 announced that he had succeeded in isolating the bitter principle of the 

 Karaka berry, and had found it to be a crystallizable resin, analogoiis to the 

 active poisons picrotoxine and digitaline. Mr. Skey proposed to name the 

 new resin " Karakine." 



The President then requested Dr. Hector to explain the various interesting 

 additions to the collections in the Museum, which were on the table. 



Dr. Hector first called attention to the ITeck of a Moa which had been 

 lent to the Museum for a time by Di-. Thomson, of Clyde, in Otago. This 

 wonderful specimen is the most perfect fragment of the large extinct birds 

 that has ever been found. It consists of six joints of the neck held together 

 by the skin and muscles of one side. Some portions of the feathers still 

 remain, and prove that the plumage of the Moa was more like that of the Emu 

 than that of the Kiwi, which is the only allied bird now living in New 

 Zealand. In alluding to the plumage of the Kiwi, Dr. Hector pointed out 

 that although Mr. Bailer and Dr. Finsch, in their last papers on the subject, 

 are inclined to restrict all our Kiwis within two species, and to do away with 

 Apteryx mantdli, still the examination of many specimens in the Museum 

 shows that Apteryx australis is peculiar in not having the shafts of the 

 feathers prolonged beyond the plumes, which is the case with both Apteryx 

 mantelli and the Grey Kiwi, A. oweni, the skins of which are, in consequence, 

 harsh to the touch. 



A cast of the Egg of the Moa-like bird of Madagascar (-^pyornis), pre- 

 sented by Dr. Finsch, of Bremen, was exhibited and compared with models of 

 the chief Moa eggs that haA'e been found in New Zealand. The largest of 

 these, 9 -5 inches long, was that found by Mr. Fife at the Kaikoura Peninsula, 

 but it looked quite small beside the JEpyornis egg, which is 12-9 inches 

 long. 



Dr. Hector corrected a mistake about the egg found at the Kaikouras, 

 which, it had been stated in the newspapers and repeated by him in a paper 

 to the Zoological Society, was found in a Maori burial place in the hands of a 

 human skeleton. Mr, Buchanan, however, had been assured by Mr. Fife, the 



