APTERYX HAASTII, Potts.
(Dr. Haast's Apteryx.)
σοί τε γαρ παίδων τί δει;—Eurip. Med. 565.
Ad. A. oweni similis, sed multò major, plumis dorsi nigro tinctis.
The restlessness of man, spurning telluric bounds, for whose aspiring genius his little planet is almost too small (witness the frantic attempts to leave it by balloons and artificial wings, fortunately without success), urges him to improve (?) off the face of the earth many a race of his fellows and numbers of species of subordinate animals. The group of islands called New Zealand[1], that metropolis of Apteryginity, presents such a scene in our time: English bees and flies, English birds, plants, and, no less, English men, drive into extinction their representatives in New Zealand. "Of the valuable Kauri gum-tree in Auckland very soon there will not be one left" (Trollope's 'Australia and New Zealand'). Many a moan has been raised by the humane and scientific observer over the fact[2]; and a cry for help, ere help is vain, frequently ascends. As well might one try to stop the ocean's tide. This is
- ↑ Dr. Haast, in his article in 'The Ibis' on its extinct birds (3rd series, vol. iv. July 1874, p. 217), says of New Zealand, "Although it may have been formerly of larger extent, it has never been more than an oceanic continental island from a zoological point of view—a theory first propounded by Darwin and Wallace, and with which I fully agree."
- ↑ In his paper, read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, at a Special Meeting, Sept. 15, 1874, Dr. Julius Haast, F.R.S., the President, gives the result of his labours in the Moabone-Point Cave, Sumner, Banks Peninsula, where he secured a multitude of fine remains of all
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