it is a phenomenon as startling as the exclusively reptilian character of the inhabitants of the dry land during the Wealden epoch.

But the existing fauna of New Zealand presents a character as exclusively ornithic and anomalous as the ancient one; for while there are upwards of fifty or sixty genera of birds, there is but one species of indigenous mammalian known to naturalists,—a frugivorous Rat. The highest representatives of the warm-blooded air-breathing classes, are the Apteryx and Brachypteryx!

In this respect, therefore, as well as in its flora, in which ferns and other cellulosæ prevail to an extent unknown elsewhere, New Zealand is a most remarkable instance of a centre of creation of peculiar organic types. (See ante p. 104.)

An important general conclusion of another kind has been deduced by Professor Owen from the amount of agreement between the fossil genera and species of birds, and the existing forms peculiar to New Zealand. For example, the affinity of the fossil Parrot of Waingongoro to the living nocturnal genus Nestor; of the Notornis (now known recent) with the Brachypteryx; of Palapteryx with Apteryx: and, we may add, of species of Apteryx, Albatross, and Penguin, apparently identical with living species.

The Dinornis, if it have no near ally in any known existing bird of New Zealand, appears to have but little affinity to any of the struthious, or other types, in the rest of the world.

The same general accordance in the existing and recently extinct forms of the warm-blooded vertebrata is exemplified in the newest tertiary deposits of Europe and Asia, by the remains of Elephants, Rhinoceroses, Hyænas, &c., and by the absence of those families, and the occurrence of gigantic Sloths, Anteaters, Armadillos, &c. in the pleistocene beds of South America; and has recently been yet more strikingly elucidated by the discovery of fossil gigantic Kangaroos, Wombats, and Daysures, in the bone-caves and freshwater deposits of Australia.1

1 Dr. Andrew Smith informs me that he has just received notice of the discovery of fossil bones of a marsupial animal related to the Kangaroo, exceeding five times in magnitude those of any living species.

One fact is especially remarkable, and must have excited the surprise of the thoughtful observer, the contrast presented by the vast accumulations of fossil bones of birds in the swamps, morasses, and pleistocene beds of New Zealand, with the excessive rarity of ornithic remains, not only in the formations of the secondary and ancient tertiary epochs, but also in the most recent alluvial deposits of every other country in the world.

Sir Charles Lyell has commented on the probable causes of the scarcity of relics of so numerous and important a class of vertebrated animals in a fossil state, and suggested, in explanation of the phenomenon, the peculiar organization of birds; their powers of flight necessarily rendering them less liable to be imbedded in the deltas of rivers, or in the bed of the ocean, than quadrupeds; whilst the relatively small specific gravity of their bodies, owing to the tubular structure of the bones, and the lightness of their feathery dermal integuments, occasions the carcases of such as die or fall into the water, to float on the surface till they are devoured or decomposed.

But this argument is scarcely applicable to the colossal brevipennate tribes possessing massive and solid skeletons, as the Dinornis and other extinct Struthionidæ, of whose bones the ossiferous deposits of New Zealand in a great measure consist. The anomaly is probably attributable to a very different cause, namely, the peculiar character both of the ancient and modern faunas of that country, in the entire absence of terrestrial mammalia. The stupendous Moas of the earlier ages of those Islands had no indigenous enemies or devourers, save the carnivorous tribes of their own class.

In the fluviatile, littoral, and marine deposits, now in progress in New Zealand, the skeletons of birds are not likely to be imbedded and preserved more frequently than in the secondary, tertiary, and alluvial strata, of other parts of the world. No such accumulations of ornithic remains as the bonebeds of Waingongoro or Waikouaiti can possibly be formed under existing circumstances; for since the advent of Europeans, a new element of destruction has been introduced into the Islands of the South Pacific; and the apterous birds, and those possessing but feeble powers of flight, and the

young and the disabled of other families, whether volant cr cursorial, now become the easy prey of the cats, dogs, and rats, which accompany the Anglo-Saxon races wherever they fix their habitations.

The most rare and interesting indigenous species are at the present moment rapidly diminishing, and must, ere long, be exterminated by the carnivorous predatory mammalia, which have, unfortunately, been added to the fauna of the Antipodes within the last half century; and the wild cats, (the progeny of the European domestic species) are so numerous and destructive, that it is vain to hope the Notornis (if any of the genus still exists), or the rarer kinds of Apteryx, will long escape the fate of the Dodo and its kindred; their final extinction cannot be very remote. Possibly, ere many years have passed away, the only known recent example of the NOTORNIS, the individual which forms the subject of the frontispiece of these unpretending pages, will be the sole relic of its race, save the fossil bones preserved in the ancient deposits of its country, and become as precious in the estimation of the paleontologist and ornithologist, as the head and foot of the frugivorous pigeon of the Mauritius.'

'See Messrs. Strickland and Melville's splendid and charming work, "The Dodo and its kindred,” 1 vol. 4to; and "Wonders of Geology," p. 130.

CHAPTER III.

PART I.

PLAN OF ROOM III.-SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS OF ROOM III.-FOSSIL REPTILES SWANAGE CROCODILE-MEGALOSAURUS-ENINGEN SALAMANDER-CHE

LONIAN REPTILES-GEOSAURUS-PTERODACTYLES-CROCODILIAN REPTILES PELOROSAURUS-POLYPTYCHODON-PLESIOSAURUS-FOSSIL MAMMALIA OF AU

-MOSASAURUS-HYLÆOSAURUS IGUANODON REGNOSAURUS

VERGNE-MINERALS-MAIDSTONE IGUANODON.

THE ROOM we have next to survey is more inconveniently crowded even than the apartments we have passed through: the floor being occupied by twenty-six Table-cabinets, so that the objects in the Wall-cases cannot be seen to advantage; and as is the case in the other rooms of this Gallery, there are neither seats nor tables for the convenience of the visitor desirous of noting the objects of interest that may particularly engage his attention.

Το

The collection in this Room, though offering but few attractions to the uninstructed eye, contains many objects of excessive rarity and great interest; and a full description of its varied contents would extend through several volumes. economise space, the specimens are deposited so as to leave no part of the cases unoccupied ; and arrangement is consequently in some measure sacrificed to convenience.

In the subjoined synoptical notice, the principal objects are enumerated in the order in which they are placed in the cabinets; and in the detailed description that follows, I have classified them under a few general heads, for the convenience of the student, without strict regard either to zoological or geological arrangement.

The Wall-cases A, B, C, D, E, F, [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,] on the south side, or left hand, of the Room, contain the remains of

Turtles, Batrachians, Crocodilians, and Saurians, and some splendid specimens of Plesiosauri; these fossils are, for the most part, from the tertiary and secondary formations of England.

This department of Paleontology is of surpassing interest in a physiological point of view, for it reveals to us colossal forms of the class Reptilia, presenting anomalous and most unexpected modifications of structure, belonging to species and genera which inhabited the lands and waters through countless ages, and have long since been obliterated from the face of the earth. Of the remains of many of these remarkable types of cold-blooded vertebrata, the collection in the British Museum contains most valuable and instructive examples.

ROOM III.

(85 feet long.)

SYNOPSIS OF CONTENTS.

ORGANIC REMAINS.

WALL-CASES-4. [1.]-Swanage Crocodile. (Goniopholis crassidens.)-Affixed to the wall are two slabs of fresh-water limestone, being the corresponding parts of the same block of stone, exposing a considerable number of the detached parts of the skeleton of a reptile allied to the Crocodile. This is a most interesting specimen from the Wealden strata at Swanage. Detached bones and dermal plates of the same species from the strata of Tilgate Forest are placed on the shelves below. On the lowest shelf is the cast of a portion of the lower jaw with teeth of the Megalosaurus Bucklandi, from the lower Oolite of Stonesfield; the original is in the museum at Oxford.

In the angle of the case (marked Batrachians) on the upper shelf, is the celebrated Eningen Salamander, (Cryptobranchus diluvii testis,) the subject of Scheuchzer's treatise, "Homo Diluvii Testis et Theoscopos."

On the middle shelves there are many fine examples of