EXTINCT REPTILES.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 171, 21 July 1910, Page 9

EXTINCT REPTILES.

(By Telegraph.—Own Correspondent.) CH-USTCHURCH, this day. i £' jjr, H. J. Stone, of Woodend, in North writes to the "Lytelton' 'Times" to. combat a statement made by ' 'TAr J. Cowan in his Old Rotorua articles that t^ e ngarara, a huge s_urian, existed i_.t_e Maori mind only as a myth. Mr. "■" Stone says that the Maori stories about " ncararas are disbelieved, because nobody _, flo contradicts them has ever seen a - specimen, and he has never seen _ I jtatement to the contrary, because he >:' w ould be laughed at. However, he is prepared to declare that the ngarara • las existed. '"I am quite -willing," he writes, "to take any oath that may be nut to mc that I have seen the ngarara lizard I saw dead. I saw it measured j j,v my father, examined it in every way, opened its mouth with a stick to see its "' teeth, rolled it on its back to see its belly, and looked at it frequently for three' days. This was over fifty years j-o. I am quite willing to describe the -thin", gi ve i* B measurements, or any- . thin" el se in m y power, but I only expect 1 * to be laughed and sneered at for my •t : 'trouble. But, for all that, the ngarara lizard certainly existed." £•• inquiries show that,. according to the ..'Maori dictionaries compiled by Bishop - Williams and Mr. Edward Tregear, the ty. _. orc i "Xgarara" was used by the Maori -in a general way for the tuatara and the '"' lizards, and also for injects, but it was • usually applied to a mythical and impossible being, aud that is the sense in which Mr. Cowan used it in his article. i Although the ichthyosaurus, the plesioEaurus> °a_d other great extinct reptiles •n-ore represented in large number in '* Kew Zealand in bygone ages, the tuatara .and about fifteen species of lizards are r the only reptiles known to have lived in this country in recent geological times. ' 'The largest species of lizard is only . about eight inches long, aud, unless Mr. -tone's < r ng_rara" is a tuatara, which ' sometimes reaches a length of twenty inches, its identity is very puzzling. _he 'occurrence of a live foreign reptile ' '•' i New Zealand is uncommon, but not unknown. Two lethery turtles and two green turtles, for instance, have found their way across the 1200 miles of ocean ,- -in the Tasman Sea. Australian sea snakes were recorded on the coast of ' Auckland in IS6S, IS7S, 18S3, 1895, 189S, ' and 1905, and in the British Museum 'there is a specimen of a ringed snake, another Australian, obtained in the 'Auckland nrovince by Sir George Grey jnaiiv years ago. The presence of these reptiles suggests the idea that a stray crocodile may have wandered from the «oast of Queensland and have given some Bubstance to the Maori legends and folk 'stories, but there are no records of the "' visits of any of these creatures, which -are not likely to leave warm seas. Fossil -"teeth, believed to belong to crocodiles, ' have been discovered in the North Island, and they lead to a supposition that crocodiles once found a home in New Zealand. The waters and the climate, however, were much warmer then than they are now. Evidence in regard to the : absence of all reptiles except the tuatara and the lizards in recent times is of a negative character, but it is so strong :." that it is believed to be quite conclusive.