The specimens found in the rivers and streams have been
washed out of their banks by the currents which now flow through channels
from ten to thirty feet deep, formed in the more ancient alluvial soil. Dr.
Mantell concludes that the islands of New Zealand were densely peopled at a
period geologically recent, though historically remote, by tribes of
gigantic brevi-pennate birds allied to the ostrich tribe, all, or almost
all, of species and genera now extinct; and that, subsequently to the
formation of the most ancient ornithic deposit, the sea-coast has been
elevated from fifty to one hundred feet above its original level; hence the
terraces of shingle and loam which now skirt the maritime districts. The
existing rivers and mountain torrents flow in deep gulleys which they have
eroded in the course of centuries in these pleistocene strata, in like
manner as the river courses of Auvergne, in Central France, are excavated in
the mammiferous tertiary deposits of that country. The last of the gigantic
birds were probably exterminated, like the dodo, by human agency: some
small species allied to the apteryx may possibly be met with in the
unexplored parts of the middle island.
THE DODO. -- A most valuable and highly interesting history of the dodo and
its kindred* has recently appeared in which the history, affinities, and
osteology of the 'Dodo, Solitaire', and other extinct birds of the islands
Mauritius, Rodriguez, and Bourbon are admirably elucidated by H.
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