Series 03: Joseph Banks - Endeavour journal, 25 August 1768 - 12 July 1771 (vol. 2) - No. 0170
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[Page 170]
166.
Some account of New Zealand
high degree, as I have mentiond in my daily Journal.
[Margin note] Quad
I all the times that we have landed in this Countrey, we have seen; I had almost said no Quadrupeds realy original natives of it. Dogs, & rats, indeed there are; the former, as in other countries, companions of the men: & the latter, probably brought hither by the men; especialy as they are so scarce, that I myself have not had an opportunity of seeing even one. Of Seals indeed we have seen a few; & one Sea Lion: but these were in the Sea, & are certainly very scarce, as we have seen no signs of them among the natives, except a few teeth of the latter, which they make into a kind of Bodkins, & value much. it appears not improbable, that there realy are no other species of Quadrupeds in the countrey, for the natives, whose cheif luxury of Dress consists in the skins & hair of Dogs, & the skins of divers birds; & who wear for ornaments the bones & beaks of birds, & teeth of Dogs, would certainly probably have made use of some part of any other animal they were acquainted with: a circumstance which tho we carefully sought after, we never saw the least signs of.
of Birds there are not many species, & none except perhaps the Gannet the same as those of Europe there are however ducks and shags of several kinds sufficiently like the European ones to be calld the same so by the seamen