278 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



been the means of introducing these bones, for there is no reason why 

 there should be such an accumulation of the bones outside of the 

 cave under any circumstances which would admit of their being 

 washed in. It is quite possible that many of them have been intro- 

 duced by wild beasts ; and some of them bear tooth-marks, which 

 were probably from the teeth of the animals which dragged them 

 within the cave and devoured them there. But I am inclined to think 

 that the principal source of this accumulation is from the sink-holes 

 above, with which these caves connect. 



" These sink-holes are curious depressions of the soil, found in 

 limestone regions, varying in diameter from ten feet upwards, with an 

 aperture at the bottom through which the water escapes. They are 

 generally overgrown by small bushes, and are just the places to which 

 such animals as the fox and wolf would resort to feed upon an animal 

 just captured. Its bones would be left, after the repast, either in the 

 hole or upon the side, until some heavy rain should occur, when the 

 water of the surrounding country of which these sink-holes are gen- 

 erally the outlet, would carry them down into the cavity. These 

 sink-holes, in almost all cases, communicate with excavations in the 

 rock or soil beneath ; and most of our Pennsylvania caves I believe 

 to have been formed by their action. A rain of unusual violence may 

 close up the inlet into one of these caves and then a new cave will be 

 formed. I have not been able to trace in this cave any communica- 

 tion with the external sink-holes; but I have in other cases, and I 

 have found a little mass of earth at the bottom, and, in many cases, 

 bones introduced there within a few weeks or months, and sometimes 

 even with the cartilage still upon them." 



FOSSIL BONES OF THE LARGE BIRDS OF NEAV ZEALAND. 



AT the meeting of the American Association, Professor Chase, of 

 Brown University, exhibited some huge bones of the Dinornis 

 Novae Zealandicc, which are believed to be the first remains of this 

 gigantic bird which have been brought to this country. They 

 were presented by one of the chiefs of the Northern Islands to 

 Captain May hew, of Martha's Vineyard. They belonged to an 

 extinct species of the Dinornis, recently described by Professor 

 Owen, of England. There formerly existed upon the islands of 

 New Zealand no less than six different species of the Dinornis, the 

 largest of which is believed to have been about eleven feet in height. 



G O 



Though similar in structure and habits to the ostrich, its weight must 

 have been three times as great. Fragments of egg-shells obtained 

 show, by their slight concavit} 7 , that they exceeded by far in 

 dimensions the egg of the ostrich; and the young, when first 

 hatched, must have been nearly as large as a full-grown turkey. The 

 foot-prints of this enormous bird probably exceeded in size the largest 

 of those found in the sandstone of the valley of the Connecticut. 

 The second species in point of size was the Dinornis ingens. It 

 was about nine feet in height, and was of more robust proportions 

 than the first species. It was to the Dinornis ingens that the largest 



