Miscellanea . 
449 
r.Iiey nearly equal the iliac bones in size. The so-called 4 pyrami- 
dales' muscles, which derive a great proportion of their origin 
from the ossa marsupialia, bear a direct ratio to those bones in 
size; and an attentive observation of the habits and modes of 
locomotion of the different marsupial species is still wanting for 
a complete elucidation of the function of the marsupial bones. 
It is important to the palaeontologist that the cartilaginous con¬ 
dition of the marsupial bones in the Thylacine should be borne in 
mind in regard to the evidence of the marsupial order that may 
be yielded by fossil remains : the fossil pelvis of the Thylacine, 
for example, had that species been long ago, as it soon is likely 
to be, extinct, would never have afforded the triumphant evidence 
to which Cuvier appealed in demonstration of the Didelpliys of 
the gypsum quarries at Montmartre; yet the Thylacine would not 
therefore have been less essentially a marsupial animal. This may 
teach us to pause before drawing a conclusion against the marsu¬ 
pial character of the small Stonesfield mammalia, if their pelves 
should ever be found without trace of the ossa marsupialia. 
ON THE GEOLOGY OF NEW ZEALAND. By Doctor 
Dieffenbach. 
( From the Proceedings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science—Fifteenth 
Meeting. —Athenaeum, July, 1845.) 
June 21, 1845. 
New Zealand forms a group of mountainous islands nearly as 
large as England and Wales, and its geology is rendered difficult 
by the primitive forests that fringe the coast, or, where these 
have been destroyed, by impenetrable thickets of the esculent 
fern. The fundamental rock is everywhere clay slate , frequently 
containing greenstone dykes, as at Port Nicholson, Queen Char¬ 
lotte’s Sound and Cloudy Bay; in the neighbourhood of the 
dykes the clay slate sometimes assumes the character of a roofing 
slate . On the banks of the rivers Eritonga and Waibo are 
terraces, or horizontal plateaux, 50 feet high, formed of boulders 
of the oldest trap-rocks, and similar terraces are seen on the 
VOL. II. NO. xi. 2 K 
sea 
