APTERYX HAASTII, Potts. 



(Dr. Haast's Apteryx.) 



aol re yap iraiScov ri Set ; — Eurip. Med. 565. 



Ad. A. oweni similis, sed multo major, plumis dorsi nigro tinctis. 



The restlessness of man, spurning telluric bounds, for whose aspiring genius 

 his little planet is almost too small (witness the frantic attempts to leave it 

 by balloons and artificial wings, fortunately without success), urges him to 

 improve (?) off the face of the earth many a race of his fellows and numbers of 

 species of subordinate animals. The group of islands called New Zealand*, 

 that metropolis of Apteryginity, presents such a scene in our time : 

 Enghsh bees and flies, English birds, plants, and, no less, EngUsh men, drive 

 into extinction their representatives in New Zealand. " Of the valuable Kauri 

 gum-tree in Auckland very soon there will not be one left" (Trollope's 

 'Australia and New Zealand '). Many a moan has been raised by the humane 

 and scientific observer over the factf ; and a cry for help, ere help is vain, 

 frequently ascends. As well might one try to stop the ocean's tide. This is 



* Dr. Haast, in his article in 'The Ibis' on its extinct birds (3rd series, vol. iv. July 1874, 

 p. 217), says of New Zealand, "Although it may have been formerly of larger extent, it has never 

 been more than an oceanic continental island from a zoological point of view — a theory first pro- 

 pounded by Darwin and Wallace, and with which I fully agree." 



t In his paper, read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, at a Special Meeting, 

 Sept. 15, 1874, Dr. Julius Haast, F.R.S., the President, gives the result of his labours in the Moa- 

 bone-Point Cave, Sumner, Banks Peninsula, where he secured a multitude of fine remains of all 



B 2 



