Page:Transactions NZ Institute Volume 10.djvu/29

Rh the mountain gorges sufficiently to cause them to drop their winter-gained loads; "Piscium et summo genus hæsit ulmo," may in the glens under Mount Kosciusko be translated, the oxen remained in the lofty gum-trees.

Very frequently when the accumulations of snow after severe winters disappear under the summer sun, cattle are found fixed in the branches of the tall trees in the narrow, deep ravines, filled up with drifted snows, in which they sank—which may readily be imagined, seeing that these drifts are sometimes 300 yards deep—in the upper gorges of the Indi river, as stated in the account given by my venerable friend the Rev. W. B. Clarke, F.R.S., who, with so much care and arduous labour, explored these wild and difficult regions. There are no evidences whatever, nevertheless, of their having gone through a colder period than the present. The view may be taken that this, one of the oldest of existing lands—part of it is as ancient as old New Zealand, of which but little remains—was an independent "centre of creation" in which the progress of development has not in its prevailing forms of life advanced beyond that point reached elsewhere in early geological eras. In this island continent "we find ourselves at home" with our earliest ancestors, "the beaked animals," the Ornithorhynchus and the Echidna; here are to be seen, hopping about, our somewhat nearer ones the rat-like marsupials, similar to those of the early tertiary epoch, our certain progenitors of the seventeenth stage or generation. We have always known that man was made of the dust of the earth, but through what forms that dust had previously passed, we had not been precisely informed until now. It may be satisfactory to many to have their proved pedigree put before them by Professor Haëckel, at all events many noble families will feel assured that it is at least as correct and authentic as that of their modern ancestors placed before their fellows in the pages of some genealogical dictionaries.

As well as on the land, individuals of very antique aspect yet linger also near its shores and in its rivers: the Trigonia and Cestracion of mesozoic days, and that strange creature of most ancient lineage the Devonian-looking Ceratodus. It may be urged that these are but examples of the persistent recurrence of peculiar forms under the obligation of the law which governs the process of evolution; or it may be held that they present instances of the tendency to revert under the potency of the same law, circumstances being suitable, to original types even after the lapse of untold ages. Six-legged cats, dogs and other creatures with such abnormal characteristics, are alleged even by some to be merely extreme cases of atavism—i.e., to show clearly the derivation of the mammalia from, or at least their common genetic origin with the Myriapoda, and their alliance to the ivy and other clasping plants.