ant, and often kept
by their ancestors in a domestic state as a pet animal. It was described
as about two feet in length, with coarse grizzly hair; and must have
more nearly resembled the otter or badger than the beaver or the
Ornithorhynchus, which the first accounts seem to suggest as the
probable type. The offer of a liberal reward induced some of the Maoris
to start for the interior of the country where the Kaureke was supposed
to be located; but they returned without having obtained the slightest
trace of the existence of such an animal. My son, however, expresses his
belief in the native accounts, and that, if the creature no longer
exists, its extermination is of very recent date. In concluding this
brief narrative of the discovery of a genus of birds once contemporary
with the colossal Moa, and hitherto only known by its fossil remains, I
beg to remark that this highly interesting fact tends to confirm the
conclusions expressed in my communication to the Geological Society,
namely, that the _Dinornis_, _Palapteryx_, and related forms, were
coeval with some of the existing species of birds peculiar to New
Zealand, and that their final extinction took place at no very distant
period, and long after the advent of the aboriginal Maoris."

Mr Gould then read a paper pointing out the zoological characters of the
bird discovered by Mr Mantell, which he had no hesitation in identifying
as the species formerly characterised, from its osseous remains, by
Professor Owen, under the name of _Notornis Mantelli_. Mr Gould, in
adverting to the extreme interest with which the present existence of a
species which was certainly contemporary with the Moa must be regarded,
pointed out, from the preserved skin, which was on the table, how
accurate a prevision of its character had been made by Professor Owen,
when investigating the fragments from which our first knowledge of it
had been derived.[19]

At length I come home to Great Britain and Ireland--the "nice little,
tight little islands" where so many of our sympathies properly centre,
where natural-history facts and all other facts interest us so much more
than parallel facts elsewhere, and where, above all, there are so many
more lights streaming into the darkness, and bringing out truth. Let us
again look back to the period of the Bison, and Reindeer, and Elk, of
the Elephant, and Hippopotamus, and Rhinoceros, of the Lion and the
Hyena, and the great Cave Bear, and search among