CoLENso. — Stakis quo. 477 



I had left with him for Oxford;''- seeing too that I bad re- 

 cently brought them from the East Cape, sixty miles further 

 north and in a different geological country. 



Moreover, I may here fairly quote from Professor Owen's 

 first letter to me, as affording an additional gleam of light on 

 my pi'esent inquiry. It is a long letter, a large portion of it 

 being occupied with the AjJtenjx : " Eoyal College of Surgeons, 

 Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, 23rd October, 1843. — Sir, — I am 

 encouraged by Sir William Hooker to hope that you may 

 interest yourself in transmitting me information and speci- 

 mens relative to a point in natural history which I have been 

 for some years endeavouring to elucidate— viz., the nature 

 and affinities of the gigantic bird which appears to have 

 become extinct, like the dodo of the Mauritius, within the his- 

 torical period in the North Island of New Zealand. The Pro- 

 ceedings of the Zoological Society for January, 1843, which I 

 take the liberty to transmit, will put you in possession of the 

 amount of information which I had obtained on the subject of 

 the Dinornis at that period." And, at the close, " As soon as 

 I have published the memoir I am now preparing on the 

 Dinornis, I shall forward it to the Eev. W. Williams and to 

 yourself." 



That letter, sent through some private hand, only reached 

 me on the "17th January, 1846 " !t I never received the 

 Proceedings of the Zoological Society therein mentioned ; but 

 I did subsequently receive from Professor Owen a copy of 

 his paper, " On Dinornis (Pai't II.). Eead June 2G, 1846;" 

 which is also contained in his larger work above quoted, 

 vol. i., pp. 115-137. 



In conclusion, I confess to a feeling of disappointment at 

 my never having seen Professor Owen's first paper, with the 

 drawings of the first fragment of bone of Dinornis that had 

 been taken to England ; which disappointment was increased 

 on my finding that such were not contained in his large work 

 on " The Extinct Wingless Birds of New Zealand." An 

 " abstract," however, of that paper is given by him in the 

 "Introduction" to his "Memoir on the Dinornis," in that 

 work {I.e., pp. 73, 74). 



The review is headed " Progress of Comparative 

 Anatomy," and includes fifteen of Professor Owen's works, 

 from 1830 to 1849 ;t it extends over fifty pages of the 



* Mentioned above, p. 470. 



t As per my indorsement thereon. Here is, also, a kind of coiifuma- 

 tion of what I have stated above, at p. 474. 



\ Omitting many special memoirs and monographs. The chief of 

 them, however, are enumerated in another very long footnote in two 

 pages, 370 and 371. 



