Discovery of a Frog in New Zealand. 67 



never been seen by me," and he doubts their existence in 

 New Zealand. The Rev. Mr Taylor, who has been long re- 

 sident as a missionary in the country, in his " Leaf from the 

 Natural History of New Zealand," (1848), makes no men- 

 tion of frogs. Dr Sinclair, Colonial Secretary, who has con- 

 tributed so much to the Fauna of New Zealand, informs me 

 that he never saw or heard of a frog in the country. I have 

 asked missionaries who have been upwards of twenty years 

 in different parts of the island, and natives who have re- 

 sided all their life in the country, and all of them declare 

 that they never either saw a frog or heard the croak of one, 

 and from these circumstances I, with many others, believed 

 that frogs did not exist in New Zealand. 



In October ]852, indications of gold were found in the 

 hills around the harbour of Coromandel, in the Gulf of Hou- 

 raki or Frith of Thames. In November, I visited the dig- 

 gings and procured the frog which is herewith sent.* It 

 was got in this way. The gold-diggers were washing the 

 soil of a mountain-stream in the machine called " Long 

 Tom." In excavating the banks they displaced several large 

 boulders of quartz rock, underneath which was discovered 

 the living frog. The gold-diggers, who voluntarily submit 

 to the evils and miseries of such a gambling trade, and can 

 rarely be excited by any thing unless a " great nugget," 

 were so much astonished at the sight of a frog, that one of 

 them desisted from the seductive occupation he was at, and 

 took the frog, and put it into a bottle of water. As the bot- 

 tle was tightly corked, the animal soon died, but so anxious 

 were the diggers to preserve it, that they stuck the dead 

 frog on the trunk of a kauri pine to dry, and when they saw 

 me they gave me the animal. I took it to the place where 

 Lieutenant-Governor Wynyard was holding a conference 

 with the tribes for the purpose of making a treaty to enable 

 Europeans to dig the gold. The frog was shewn to many of 

 the natives, and was carefully examined by several intelligent 

 old men, one of whom was Taniwha, a celebrated chief, who 



* This specimen is now in the possession of James Thomson, Esq., of Glen- 

 do man. 



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