NEW ZEALAND STUDIES 479 
Megaftera longnnana, the Humpback Whale. About 
30 specimens of the last species were examined. An 
embryo inches in length was obtained from a female 
humpback whale weighing about 60 tons. 
While at the Bay of Islands an opportunity was taken 
of examining the inheritance of the pigment in several 
families of Maori-European half-castes. Sufficient data 
were collected to show that the phenomenon of Mendelian 
segregation evidently takes place. 
Collections of fossil plants were made from several 
localities in the South Island of New Zealand, with a view 
to settling the geological age of the so-called ' glossopteris 
beds ' of Mt. Potts. From this material Dr. E. A. Newell 
Arber* has been able to show that the oldest known plant- 
bearing beds in New Zealand are of Rhaeto-Jurassic age. 
One volume of the Reports will be devoted to a 
description of these fossil flora, together with the fossil 
plants found by the Polar Party and others in the Antarctic. 
An account of some undescribed collections of New 
Zealand Tertiary and Mesozoic marine invertebrates is 
to be included in the Expedition Reports. 
The Antarctic 
During the three summer voyages to the Antarctic 
a series of qualitative and quantitative plankton samples 
were taken between New Zealand and McMurdo Sound, 
and also in different parts of the quadrant visited by the 
ship. 
The number of plankton samples obtained was 135. 
♦Arber, Proc. Roy. Soc, B. vol. 86, 1913; Proc. Camb. Phil. 5oc., vol. 
xvii. pt. i. 1913. 
