14 
WARD’S NATURAL SCIENCE BULLETIN. 
NT 
The Hatteria (Sphenodon) Punctatus. 
Prof. Ward, sending specimens from New Zea- 
land, wrote as follows: 
“ You will be pleased to see that at last, I have 
obtained this rare and much-wished-for Saurian. 
No longer will our catalogues, which aim at 
systematic fullness, have an odious blank after 
‘Order III, Rhyncocephalina.’ Now for the first 
time can naturalists procure, by simple purchase, 
specimens of this rarest and most abnormal of 
Lizards, which is itself a species, a genus, a 
family and an order. Dr. Gunther, of the Brit- 
ish Museum, who described it some years ago, 
says, ‘ No other specimen appears to have 
reached Europe; indeed, so far as I am aware, 
no museum out of Europe appears to possess 
Hatteria. French naturalists do not even men- 
tion it. Narrowly restricted in its distribution, 
exposed to easy capture by its sluggish habits, 
esteemed as food by the natives, pursued by 
pigs, it is one of the rarest objects in zoological 
and anatomical collections, and may one day be 
enumerated among the forms which have become 
extinct within the memory of man.’ Captain 
Cook, who in his third voyage entered the 
Bay of Plenty, in New Zealand (and lost half a 
boat’s crew by the savage natives), mentions ‘ a 
monstrous animal of the lizard kind. ’ But 
Dieffenboch, the traveler, seems to have been the 
first (in 1843) to have secured a specimen. He 
says, ‘ I had been apprised of the existence of a 
large lizard which the natives call Tuatara, and 
of which they were much afraid. But although 
looking for it at the places where it was said to 
be found, and offering great rewards for a speci- 
men, it was only a few days before my departure 
from New Zealand that I obtained one, which 
had been caught in a small, rocky islet, called 
Karewa, in the Bay of Plenty. From all that I 
could gather about this Tuatara, it appears that 
it was formerly common in the islands (of the 
Bay of Plenty), lived in holes near the sea-shore, 
and the natives killed it for food. Owing to this 
latter cause it is now very scarce, and many, 
even, of the older residents of the islands have 
never seen it.’ My earliest enquiry when I 
reached Auckland, the chief port of Northern 
New Zealand, was, ‘ Where is the Tuatara to be 
found? ’ They told me at the museum that they 
were nearly extinct, but showed me two speci- 
mens in spirits, and told me what they could 
about the locality. Two days later I took my 
collecting can and a drum of alcohol and went 
aboard a steamer bound down the coast to Tau- 
ranga — 140 miles south. Tauranga is a little port 
of no special importance, except as being the 
point from which tourists strike into the interior 
of the island to visit the famous New Zealand 
•Geyser district. It (the port) lies at the bottom 
• of the Bay of Plenty, that great curve inland of 
the Pacific Ocean, on the east side of the north- 
ern island of New Zealand, which you will see 
•on any map. It is in this bay, at its eastern 
•extremity, 40 or 50 miles from here, that lay a 
group of rocky islets, where the lizards are. I 
had some delay in finding a craft suited to my 
purpose— one large enough for the heavy seas 
which roll outside, and yet not so large as to be 
altogether too expensive. At length I found just 
the thing — a cutter of 25 tons burden, which had 
come up the coast with a load of wood. More- 
overthe captain (a most genial Scotchman named 
Macpherson, who had beat about the world over, 
including California), was pleased to meet with 
a Yankee with whom he could talk on common 
ground of his old mining experiences. For this 
and because he wanted to ‘ get a sight at the 
durned leezards,’ he reduced his regular charter 
price to pounds sterling per day, with con- 
ditions that it should be for no longer than a 
week, and that no ‘ varemunts ’ should be let 
loose in his cabin! So we laid in some supplies 
of food and water, and started from our moor- 
ing before the town, with a mild evening breeze. 
Outside the ‘ Heads’ darkness set in, and with it 
came a stiff breeze which soon raised a heavy 
sea. Through this, with blackness all around, 
we dashed at a tremendous rate all night, ship- 
ping many a sea, and thoroughly wet and cold. 
In the morning we found ourselves close by 
Whaikare or White Island, a quietly active vol- 
cano 60 miles at sea — the last point, in this direc- 
tion, of a line of volcanic activity which extends 
for over 150 miles in a north-east by south-west 
direction, and includes at its other end the Gey- 
ser district, and terminates in the great volcano 
mountain 6,500 feet high, of Tangariro. We 
ran close into shore at Whaikare, and went 
ashore for the day. What we did there— how 
we hauled our cutter’s boat over a part of the 
volcano’s crater-bed and launched it on a lake of 
boiling water, strong with alum and sulphuric (?) 
acid, how we collected specimens of sulphur and 
selenite, and how we caught with our hands 
eleven full grown gannets (Sula australis), who 
were too dazed and too stupid to fly away — all 
this I have written to Father and Henry. With 
the night wind we ran 40 miles to landward, and 
cast anchor in a cove of Whale Island, an extinct 
volcano, where is a sulphur deposit which has 
been lately worked. From the top of this island 
we could see, looking to be close under our feet, 
the Ru Rima rocks, those little rocky islets six 
miles away, against which the sea broke in a 
circle of tossing foam. For two days we waited 
impatiently at Whale Island for the wind to 
cease and the waves to subside, so that we might 
run over to the Ru Rimas, or rather that we 
might land when we got there, which latter 
would only be possible to do with a calm sea. 
The third day t lie wind had completely fallen, 
and the sea was calm as a lake. So we started 
at early morn with the faintest of breezes, which 
withal was from an adverse quarter, and forced 
us to sail by long tacks. At noon w r e were about 
two miles nearer to the rocks, and four hours 
more of tacking brought us still one mile nearer. 
The situation w r as most tantalizing; we could see 
the rocks plainly, and, had that been safe to do, 
could have left our cut- 
ter and rowed to them 
in the dinghy in less 
than an hour. And 
who could say what A . sternum of Hatteria 
tempestuous weather from above ; st. sternum ; 
might come to morrow st. r. sternal ribs; sp. “ab- 
and for dnvs after anrl Fomina ribs.” B. two “ab- 
anu ioi uays aitei and dominal ribs, showing then- 
drive US away from union by anchylosis, and 
our goal altogether ! ttiat eBel1 “ rib ” is composed 
Fortunately, just be- tw0 bones - 
fore dark there sprung up a light breeze, and in 
a few minutes we were close at the Ru Rimas. 
They are three rocky islets, each of them of but 
four or five acres in extent. Two of them are 
united by a reef, bare at low tide; the third lies 
a little more to sea. Between this and the other 
two we found a narrow channel with sandy bot- 
tom, where, with fair shelter from the waves, we 
cast anchor. The sun was just setting behind 
the twin islands, and sharp against the western 
sky a few hundred yards away was the outline 
of low rocks, and on the highest line of these 
stood a great lie-goat — the relict of those once 
placed on the island — who came up to welcome 
us. After an impatient night we landed early on 
the twin isles, and searched them over for an 
hour in vain, seeking for the Tuataras. We then 
took our boat to cross to the other island. In 
launching it one of our men, wading in the sea 
up to his knees, sprang lustily out with a yell of 
pain. He had stepped into a spring of boiling 
water which came up through the sand, and was 
so hot as to smartly scald his foot. The third 
outer islet is the smallest of the group, contain- 
ing scarce five acres, On one side of it rose a 
rocky mount thirty or forty feet high, with pre- 
cipitous sides and a wooded top. The balance of 
the isle was covered with great, angular frag- 
ments of rock grown over with a dense covering 
of thorns (prickly scrub). Few paths or clear 
ways led through this anywhere, while to crowd 
through the scrub itself seemed actually impos- 
sible. One of the men found a broken track 
which led to a hole into which he thrust his arm 
at a venture. He pulled it out very quickly, 
bringing out a penguin, which, with its sharp, 
hooked beak, was fastened to his finger with a 
bull dog grip, and had to be finally chopped off. 
For two hours we searched assiduously, but in 
vain; no Tuataras were to be seen. It seemed 
as if all had left the rocks or had never been 
tlnfre. At last on an out-heap I found the whit- 
ening skull of one, and a few vertebne were ‘ 
attached to it by some ligaments which were 
still rather fresh. Thus encouraged we searched 
anew. The difficulty lay in the size of the rock 
fragments, over which no lizard ran, while the 
clifts between them were so narrow and so grown 
up with the bushes that it was difficult to get the 
body or even one’s head into them and down to 
the gravel level, so as to see the creatures under 
the rocks. One of our men, however, succeeded 
in getting quite down flat on the ground, and in 
this way he crawled about under the bushes and 
