IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 18675, 3 October 1922, Page 2

IN TOUCH WITH NATURE

ROMANCE OF A F.OSSIL. By J. Drummond, F.L.S., F.Z.S. Fossils found in corme sandstones some two miles from tho Motu township. Poverty -tkiy, ami at. Waitangi J [ill, an oil centre near Ciisborne, not long ago, supply a beautiful lesson on the speculative character of the human mind' and its eredulousness, on the triumph of palreonlologieal reasoning, and on the untiring search for truth in these days, when dry-as-dust doggedness reveals worlds of romance that all the poetic imagination of former ages failed to create. The fossils are, casts or pieces of beleinnities. Their namo helps to perpetuate early errors. It. comes from '"belos," an arrowhead or dart. They are found in many parts of the world, (iood specimens, between two and three inches long, tapering to a sharp point, certainly look like stone heads of arrows or spears, and the name is apt, but it was bestowed at a time when it was believed that the arrows and spears had been hurled about by angry gods. There is no record cf what Neolithic man thought of them. The first of their names that has been traced is "Lapis lyncis," the result of a belief that they were the remains of an animal the Romans called lynx, probably the caracal. Later the puzzling tapering stones were known as "Iduei dactyJi," fingers from Mount Ida. The Dark Ages, bedevilled and fear-ridden, transformed that name into ''devil's fingers." They became Lapides fulminantes, thunderstones, and then arrow-stones. A more advanced age believed that they -were stakctit.ios or crystals. Early palaeontologists agreed that they were the remains of shellfishes, but could not define their position in the zoological ecalo. Cuvier, 1769-1852, and Lamarck, 1741-1829, ranked them as the remains of cophalopods. Sir R. Owen about IPSO placed them in the dibranchiata —two-gilled—order of those creatures, rind they are now known to have been chambered shells, allies of tho squids, cuttlefish, and other decapods. Although they became extinct in the ChaJk age—their range extended from tho Lias to tho Chalk—and although their soft parts have perished and little except the spear-like guards remain, comparative reasoning lias reconstructed them in detail, and has told something of their habits. They had a pair of large sessile eyes, ink-bags, side-fins, and spreading arms, springing from the. head, each arm with from 12 to 20 pairs of slender, horny hooks. They seem to have been gregarious and voracious. They certainly were highly specialised. They lived in fairly shallow waters of ancient seas. When swimming they were in almost a vertical position, but at times they rose swiftly and stealthily towards tho surface, fastened their hooks into a drowsy fkh, and dragged it to the bottom to bo devoured. They reached their highest development in the Jurassic Period, and they were dismissed from the universe before the dawn of the Tertiary Era. The fact that several hundred species have been identified from the fossilised remains shows how plentiful were. Their remains have been found in New Zealand at Waitangi Hill and near Motu, Poverty Bay; Mataura Falls. Southland; Coverham, Marlborough; Waipara. North Canterbury; the Huntly-Kawhia road, Waikato; Shag Valley and Brighton, near Dunedin: and Manaia, near Coromandel. In New Zealand their remains sometimes are found in the company of remains of an extinct wingshell, Aviculidte. Mr T. L. Ward, Waimea, Aotea, West; Coast of the North Island, has lived in that district for 40 years, and always has found tho blue penguins, karora, there to be plentiful, neither increasing nor decreasing perceptibly. He states that they usually lay in October, but he has found fresh eggs :n December. As a mattor of fact, an occasional nest may be found at any time in the spring, although most of the females lay about the same- time. Each female at each nesting lays two white eggs, about tho same size as pheasants' oggs. The nests are made amongst rocks above high-water mark, often in a. position that can bo reached bv human beings with difficulty only. Sometimes a hole is scratched out under a flax bush or a rush bush, or the bird may go under some rubbish and make a rude nest out of material moat convenient. Mr Ward does not know how long incubation takes, about three weeks, he thinks. The young penguins, when hatched, ate tiny balls of black fluff, not unlike a duckling. Both parents guard thorn very fiercely,, and.^ Mr Ward believes that both, probably, take a hand in hatching. "I think that the parents disgorge food for the young," Mr Word continues, "as I cannot imagine a penguin scrambling over steep rocks with a half-grown schnapper in its bill, and I never havo seen traces on the sand of penguins having dragged anything' along. As I have seen half-grown penguins in a nest, 1 presume that they stay at home until they are able mainly to do for themselves, but I have seen on the sand two tracks, close together, winding this way and that way to the water. I have not noted any difference in the sizes of the marks, and I do not know if they were made by two lovers, by a parent helping a young, or by a penguin helping its sick mate. A neighbour told mo that he found a penguin 400 ft above sea level, up a very stoop hill, practically a cliff. He also told me that, he saw another penguin disputing ownership of a burrow with a rabbit. As the penguin was tho better man, the rabbit was obliged to face death in the open air. "I know of penguins having been found at an altitude of 400 ft at all seasons, some of them almost a mile from the sea. They seem to stay closely at home at the moulting, but when it is over they disappear suddenly for some time. I saw one several miles from land. They are remarkably alert in the water, and they can diye for several chains. They can bite severely One bit through a boy's trousers and underpants and drew blood." A photograph of tho Old Hat, sent by a southern visitor to the Bay of Islands, shows that islet to be surprisingly like an old felt hat, with a broad straight brim, resting on the surface of the water of that delightful semi-tropical bay. _ It has attracted some geological attention over sinco Professor J. D. Dana, a member of the United States Exploring Expedition, brought it into prominence after he saw it 82 years ago. r lhe rim, of the Old Ha,t is a' rock platform, which hardly is covered at high tides. Professor Dana explained the presence of the platform by tho facts that sheets of water protect rooks beneath them from active chemical decomposition, and that rocks below sea-level relatively are stronger than rooks above sea-level, and resist the weak action of waves, which removes the upper weathered lay-prs. He used the principle to account generally for rock platforms much in evidence on the coast of the Auckland province and in northern inlets. Mr J. A. Bartrum, Auckland University • College, expresses an opinion that tho brim of the Old Hat and other rook platforms are not so much the result of attacks by waves on a definite zone of weathered rocks as the result of destruction of the faces of cliffs by subaerial erosion, and! tho removal of the waste by the weak action of waves,