"Sphenedon still lives om Kacewa\" says Dr. Noble, "be-cotise the conditions of life on that island are about the same to-day as they were eight million years ago. He has not changed in all those years because he has not had to change. Sphenedon exists to-day where he does simply because he is unchangeable. Left has to adapt itself to conditions. When conditions change, life adopts itself or perishes. That is what happened to the dinosaur. He lived and flourished for four million years. Then conditions changed and he did not, He died. No court Sphencdon died too, in other pats of the earth. We have seen him die on the larger islands of New Zealand. He would not exist to-day on Karewa if it had changed much."
This is one of the reasons why New Zealand, even more than Australia is so interesting to the naturalist. It contains traces of forms of life not found elsewhere, and as in the case of Sphenedon the living forms themselves. mainly because it has not changed until quite recently. For example, Sphenedon had no competition with predatory animals until recently. The greatest enemies of all the pre-historic creatures were mammals, who first evolved, five million years ago, as small, rate creatures. But in two million years' time- these mammals had grown and adapted themselves, and the prehistoric reptiles had nep adapted themselves. Wherefore the unchanging reptiles perished as did the dinosaur. But the record of the rocks shows that there were no mammals in New Zealand until approximately a thousand years age—a mere split-second in the history of the world. These first mammals in New Zealandk were men and rats, which the men brought with them. And for eight million years. minus a thousand, Sphenedon had no competition with other forms of life.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.