1848.] MANTELL ON FOSSIL REMAINS FROM NEW ZEALAND. 239 
the New Zealanders will appear to have been of very ancient date, 
and not to have origimated from the want of animal food on account 
of the extinction of the Moas, as Professor Owen so ingeniously and 
indulgently suggested in extenuation of this horrid practice by so 
intelligent a race as the Maoris. 
ILI. General Conelusions.—From the scattered facts which I have 
thus brought together in order to throw some light on a question of 
such deep palzontological interest—upon the principle that the 
feeblest rays, when concentrated into a focus, will produce some degree 
of illumination—I think we may safely infer that the islands of New 
Zealand were densely peopled at a period geologically recent, by 
tribes of gigantic ostrich-like birds, of species and genera which have 
long since been obliterated from the face of the earth; and that 
subsequently to this “ dge of Struthionide,”’ the land has under- 
gone those physical changes, by which the areas occupied by the 
ornithic ossiferous deposits, and the beds of shingle and loam, which 
now form terraces from 50 to 100 feet above the sea-level, were 
elevated to their present positions. This inference seems to be cor- 
roborated by the fact that the existing mountain-torrents and rivers 
flow in deep channels which they have eroded in these pleistocene 
deposits ; in like manner as the rivers of Auvergne have excavated 
their course through the mammiferous tertiary strata of that country. 
The accounts given by Mr. Colenso, the Rev. H. Taylor and others, 
of the exposure of the bone-bed in the channels of the mountain- 
streams, and of the bones being left on the river-shoals after heavy 
floods, remind us of. the conditions under which the mammalian 
fossils of the Sub-Himalayas were first brought under the notice of 
our eminent countrymen, Major Cautley and Dr. Falconer. And in 
New Zealand, as in India, the fossil remains of extinct animals are 
associated with those of existing genera; and the land is still in- 
habited by diminutive representative forms of the colossal bemgs 
which flourished in the pleistocene, or early human epoch ; for the 
Apteryx and the Porphurio may be regarded as the living types of 
the Moa and the Notornis. 
I do not deem it necessary to enlarge on the question whether the 
Dinornis and Palapteryx still exist in New Zealand; on this point I 
would only remark, that Mr. Colenso, who was the jirst observer 
that investigated the nature of the fossil remains with due care and 
the requisite scientific knowledge, (having determined the struthious 
affinities of the birds to which the bones belonged, and pointed out 
their remarkable characters, ere any intelligence could have reached 
him of the result of Professor Owen’s examination of the specimens 
transmitted to this country,) has given, in his masterly paper before 
quoted, very cogent reasons for the belief that none of the true Moas 
exist, though it is probable the last of the race were exterminated by 
the early inhabitants of these islands. 
But whatever may be the result of future researches as to the rela- 
tive age of the ossiferous deposits, or the existence or extinction of 
the colossal bipeds whose relics are before us, this fact cannot be 
questioned—the vast preponderance of the class of birds which pre- 
