174 Transactions. — Zoology. 



Dinornithidae ; so much so that both Dromomis australis and 

 Dinomis (?) queenslandice were placed by their original de- 

 scribes among the moas largely because in them also the 

 femur is non-pneumatic. Nevertheless this character is not 

 absolutely constant even in the true Dinornithidas of New 

 Zealand. I now exhibit to the members a femur of an adult 

 bird belonging to Pachyomis pygmceus, from the Te Aute 

 Swamp, near Napier, in which the pneumatic foramen is well 

 developed (Plate IX., p.f.). The opening is subtriangular in 

 shape, and about half an inch in diameter. It is placed at 

 the posterior base of the neck, slightly more interior than the 

 same cavity in the emu. The interior-lower margin is broken, 

 and evidently extended further, but the external and upper 

 margins are quite smooth and rounded, and are unquestion- 

 ably in their natural condition, so that the interior - lower 

 margin could not have extended much farther. The canal 

 leading from the opening is divided by a longitudinal septum 

 into two parts, each of which contracts into a narrow tube, 

 through which a fine wire can be pushed into the interior of 

 the bone. Probably no air-sac penetrated into the canal, but 

 blood-vessels alone passed through the two tubes. Neverthe- 

 less the large opening is evidently a reversionary character, 

 and a proof that a pneumatic canal and air-sac existed in the 

 ancestors of the moas. 



EXPLANATION OF PLATE IX. 



Posterior aspect of left femur of Pachyomis pygmceus, reduced to 

 § natural size : p.f., pneumatic foramen. 



Art. XV. — On a New Species of Weta (Locustidaa) from 



Bounty Island. 



By Captain F. W. Hutton, F.R.S. 



[Read before the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury, 2nd May, 1894.] 



During the last trip of the C.S.S. "Hinemoa" to Bounty Island 

 Captain Fairchild collected, under some rocks, specimens of 

 one of those wingless locusts called weta by the Maoris — by 

 which name they are known to all New-Zealanders. As 

 there are no trees nor shrubs on the island — nothing but bare 

 rocks — it seems that these insects must feed on the dead sea- 

 weed. It is an interesting problem how so large an insect 

 got to a small island about two miles long, composed only of 



