The President's Address. By Dr. H. Woodward. 151 



Another Cretaceous bird, Ichthyornis victor, also from Kansas, 

 appears to have been possessed of powerful flight, with a strongly- 

 formed and deeply carinate breast-bone ; the beak being like 

 Hesperomis armed with teeth, but implanted in distinct sockets. 

 The vertebrce were bi-concave, as is the case with a few recent and 

 many extinct reptiles. 



The Odontopteryx toliapicus, from the London Clay of Sheppey, 

 also had a powerful serrated bill well adapted for seizing fishy 

 prey. An imperfect skull of a large bird, from Sheppey, probably 

 allied to the ostrich, is named Dasomis Londinicnsis. 



We have another struthious bird, Gastornis Klaaseni, from 

 the lower Eocene of Croydon, as large as an ostrich but more 

 robust. 



A similar bird, Gastornis jxirisiensis, was found in the Eocene 

 of Meudon, near Paris. 



Fossil bird remains have not unfrequently been met with in 

 the Miocene-Tertiary beds of Allier, La Grive-St. Alban, in France, 

 the Brown Coal of Bonn, and from Oeningen in Switzerland. 

 Another fossil Ostrich comes from the Miocene of the Siwalik 

 Hills in India. But the most wonderful assemblage of fossil bird 

 remains met with anywhere has been found in the islands of New 

 Zealand. Here since first these birds were isolated and left alone 

 unmolested to increase and multiply, undisturbed by man the 

 destroyer, or by any carnivorous mammal ; with only two possible 

 enemies, a large vulturine bird Harpagornis, and the "Kea" 

 parrot which, is carnivorous in its habits ; — for untold centuries 

 they remained and flourished until the advent of the Maoris, who 

 commenced their steady destruction, which must have gone 

 on probably for hundreds of years. Mr. Commissioner Mantell 

 discovered at Poverty Bay the native ovens where the Maoris 

 prepared their repasts, and where the bony remains of hundreds 

 of these birds were found associated with the charcoal of the fires 

 in which they had been cooked. They were probably living as 

 lately as down to the first visits paid to New Zealand by white men 

 in 1642 ;* or even when Capt. Cook, the navigator, sailed around 

 the islands in 1769-70, and took - possession of them for the 

 British Government ; they however remained uncolonised by the 

 English until the year 1840. The Maoris, being cannibals, created 

 some little trouble, as after exterminating all the wingless birds, 

 they proceeded to Chatham Islands, 500 miles distant from New 

 Zealand, where they devoured all the natives. 



Some idea may be formed of the enormous length of time 

 during which these great Eatite birds, Dinornithidce, must have 

 lived undisturbed, from the fact that some twenty species have 

 been described, varying in size from animals 12 ft. or more in 



* These Islands were first discovered by Tasman in 1G42. 



