RECENT SCIENCE. 819 



ful wings, had apart from its teethed jaws all the appearance 

 of a bird of our own time.* And, finally, the discovery of a large 

 ostrich-like bird (Dasornis Londinensis) in the Lower Eocene of 

 the isle of Sheppey, and of another, also big and flightless bird 

 (Oastornis), in the Eocene of Meudon, Rheims, and Croydon, 

 established a further connection between the bird-like lizards of 

 the Triassic times and real specialized birds. 



These last discoveries brought the series very near to our own 

 times, and they were the more valuable as the just-mentioned 

 Gastomis proved to combine some of the characters of both flying 

 birds and of those which, like the ostrich, the cassowary, and the 

 emu, do not fly ; while the Pliocene deposits of north India and 

 the numberless remains of the so-called moas of New Zealand 

 yielded specimens of still nearer ancestors of our flightless birds. 

 The New Zealand deposits of bones became known more than fifty 

 years ago, when Owen, on receiving (in 1839) a broken but char- 

 acteristic moa bone, determined the general characters of the 

 great ostrich-like Dinornis, which inhabited the island quite re- 

 cently, but is found no more in a living state. But it is especially 

 of late that the enormous accumulations of moa remains have 

 been explored in detail. Cart-loads of those bones have already 

 been shipped to Europe, and new accumulations continue to be 

 found always with the same astonishing numbers of individuals 

 entombed on the same spot, and in the same excellent state of 

 preservation. Such a deposit one of the most remarkable of its 

 kind has been lately discovered by Prof. H. 0. Forbes, near 

 Oamaru, in the South Island of New Zealand. In a small hollow 

 which did not exceed twelve yards in width, no less than eight 

 hundred to nine hundred individuals were imbedded in solid 

 peat, under a superficial layer of a few inches of soil. Many 

 skeletons lay quite undisturbed, and in some instances the con- 

 tents of the stomach, which consisted of triturated grass and 

 small rounded and smooth quartz pebbles, were found lying in 

 their natural position, under the sternum. The bones of a giant 

 buzzard, a big extinct goose, the Cape Barron goose, the kiwi, and 

 so on, were mixed together with bones and full skeletons of sev- 

 eral species of Dinornis, big and small. f And again, as on pre- 

 vious occasions, the New Zealand scientists are at a loss to explain 

 the accumulation of so many various birds on such a narrow 

 space. However, the most interesting part of Prof. Forbes's dis- 



* R. Lydekker's Catalogue of Fossil Birds of the British Museum, London, 1892. For 

 the general reader we can not but highly recommend a charming book of the same author, 

 Phases of Animal Life, Past and Present, London, 1892, which is a real model of scientific 

 and popular literature. 



f Letter to Nature, March 3, 1892, vol. xlv, p. 416. 



