MUSEUM GIFTS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 294, 12 December 1935, Page 8

MUSEUM GIFTS.

RECENT ACCESSIONS.

AGE OF REPTILES IN N. 2.

AN INTERESTING SHOW-CASE

For about- 100,000,000 years, beginning about 150,000,000 years ago, reptiles ruled the world, on land and in the air and sea, branching out into a diversity of grotesque forms" that'would put the fancies of a Disney to shame. The contest which is still going on between gun and armour was then raging. Giant carnivora, real nightmares of teeth and claws, preyed 011 huge vegetarians Avliicli developed armour like tanks; pterodactyls were the kings of the air, and fish-like and lizard-like forms were the terrors of the deep. There was a time when geologists made more or less accurate guesses at the time scale of this Mes.ozoic' Age,, judging by such tilings .as the rate of deposition of rocks and the salinity of the sea, but tlicy can now speak with much more confidence, for, in radio-active rock 6 which disintegrate into lead, Nature lias provided a geological, clock which keeps perfect time.

An interesting showcase of this era in New Zealand has just been completed by Mr. A. W. B. Powell, conchologist andpalaeontologist at' the War Memorial Museum. With the aid of a system of panelling, Mr. Powell has grouped tlie exhibits" into plants, and so 011, which greatly assists appreciation of tliein. One of the most interesting specimens is a cast of the fossil paddle fin of one of these reptile-toothed aquatic forms, the plesiosaur. From the size of the limb it is judged that the plesiosaur must have been about 25 feet from snout to tail. The fossils, from one of which this exhibit has been cast, were lost en route to England, but fortunately precautions had been taken against this possibility. They were found in Waipawa, North Canterbury. Fossil Aristocrat. Other interesting specimens in the case are a fossil ancestor of the kayri and a fossil ammonite from near Te Kuiti. These shellfish are among the real fossil aristocrats, going back _ to Hear the beginning of the geological periods in which the remains of animals are found. They began as straight, tubelike animals, and then developed spiral forms like the nautilus. But whereas the nautilus has remained a spiral form, arid there are four species of it in the world to-day, the ammonites long alter began to go back to the straigJiform and died out, one of evolution's many failures.

Tho invertebrate department of the museum has also recently acquired a heteropod mollusc, a soft-bodied shellfish which 4 es e r ts its sheii after tii3 embryonic stage and comes to resemble an elongated jelly fish. Even trained students might easily pass it over in the water without ever noticing it. The specimen was netted by a Victoria College student at Island Bay, Wellington.

The ever-increasing list of species has had one more added to it by a Chatham Islands resident, Mr. Watherspoon, who has sent a verconella, a spiral shellfish. A fossil cowrie shell, sent from Victoria, near Melbourne, dates back to the Miocene period, some 19 million years ago. Fallen migrants. Mr. R. A. Falla has also had some interesting additions to his bird treasures. One is a dead lesser golden plover, a migrant from Siberia. Mr. Falla said the migratory birds bad evidently had a more than usually trying season, as three of these plovers had been found— in at North Cape, and one recently by a steamer at sea.

An unusual specimen is a spine-tailed swift, a' bird which migrates from Japan to Australia and has been found in New Zealand only on three previous occasions. Thie one was found by Mr., N. A. Clifton, at Mokau.

These migratory. birds are very like modern aviators, who set out on long ocean flights only so often to disappear into the blue. But whereas the aviator pits his petrol capac/iy against chance winds, the birds have only a certain muscular power, which ' they cannot by any means increase. Generally the migration season coincides with favourable winds, but a chance head wind may mean death to the travellers. The golden plover covers 2000 miles, between Alaska and Hawaii, in one hop, and some migratory birds may do even more. Erom Christchurch has come a wellmade nest of the European rook. The rook is now found only in Canterbury and Hawke's Bay, but 40 years ago there was a colony, in the Auckland Domain. Soldiers' Grave.

The director of the museum, Mr. Arcliey, has just received from Mrs. E. Todd, widow of Rifleman J. M. Todd, a photograph of the grave of the first New Zealand soldiers killed in the war, on Christmas Day, 1915. Other general accessions include the gift by Mrs. L. T. Griffin of an English ale glass, engraved with hops and barley, completing the pair which were in the Bucknill collection; a rock, inscribed with Maori carving, but of no definite pattern or symbolism, from Kaukapakapa; Chinese and Swiss wooden carved figures presented by Mr. H. H. Collcott, and models of French ships of war (deposited .by him) made by French prisoners in England during the Napoleonic wars from the scraps of bone left over from their food; an Indian sword and a collection of arrows from Santa Cruz, and from the same place, given by Captain Burgess, of St. Helier's, a nopi, an instrument used to gauge the size of groups of feathers in the red feather currency of that place; two Eskimo bone spoons and a knife in a carved bone sheath. The Rev. A. J. Seamer has deposited with the museum a collection of Australian aboriginal weapons and implements. Mr. Arcliey has also received three British recruiting posters of 1915, which have been presented by a Timaru resident. These posters are not easy to get as some of them were repulped for papermaking.