442 
THE AGE OE NEW ZEALAND. 
with, a very gradual diminution of size to upwards of a 
hundred feet without a single branch. 
Lyell, as well as Hugh Miller, was struck with the simi- 
larity of the New Zealand flora to that of the European coal 
measures ; to the same effect is the observation of Ansted : — 
“ It is a remarkable fact, the flora of the carboniferous period 
is found, to a great extent, uniform in those parts of the globe 
from which the principal carboniferous fossils have been 
obtained, and if we wish to compare this ancient flora with 
those which bear resemblance to it at present, either in the 
general preponderance of particular plants, or in the total 
absence of others, we must leave the northern hemisphere, 
and transport ourselves to the islands in the neighbourhood 
of our antipodes, where New Zealand and Australia, together 
with an innumerable multitude of small islands, form almost 
the only land in the vast area between the tropic of Capricorn 
and the antarctic circle.” Whilst such are the views of 
geologists who never visited those parts, and who wrote 
when few scientific men had personally inspected them, it 
is especially satisfactory to have the opinion of one who has 
actually examined them. 
Dr. Hochstetter, the geologist of the Austrian expedition, 
who visited those shores in the u Novara ” in 1859, speaking 
of the wingless birds whose fossil remains he was so fortunate 
to obtain in great abundance, makes the following remarks : 
“ These gigantic birds belong to an era prior to the human 
race, to a post-tertiary period, and it is a remarkably incom- 
prehensible fact of the creation, that, whilst at the very same 
period in the old world, elephants, rhinoceroses, hippopo- 
tami ; in South America gigantic sloths and armadillos ; in 
Australia gigantic kangaroos, wombats, and dasyuri, were 
living, the colossal forms of animal life were represented in 
New Zealand by gigantic birds, which walked the shores 
then untrod by the foot of any quadruped.” 
It remains to be proved whether those gigantic birds have 
entirely disappeared ; if they have, it is only since those 
islands have been colonized. Not only have we found the 
bones of the moa in the native ovens, but also their egg 
