i893- 



THE MO AS OF NEW ZEALAND. 377 



were, as I was informed i>y ihc mine-driver who excavated them, 

 obtained from tunnels far apart, and many feet further under the 

 lava, at a different part of the quarry from where the metatarsal 

 fragments were obtained. These fragments are quite insufficient to 

 determine with anything like the accuracy employed throughout his 

 paper by Mr. Mutton the length of the tibia, which is, notwith- 

 standing, entered (without a mark of interrogation as if certamly 

 ascertained) as 12 inches. The chances are almost infinite against 

 the two pieces being parts of the same bone. In speaking of these 

 two fragments of tibiae (which I examined carefully in the matrix, 

 but found too imperfect to dare to identify), I say that they " were, 

 undoubtedly, portions ... of one of the greater forms." I should 

 have expressed myself more accurately if I had said they were 

 " undoubtedly not one of the smaller forms." As regards the 

 metatarsal fragments which Mr. Hutton has assigned to 

 this species, apparently for the reason that they were found in the 

 same quarry, I have carefully compared them with the collection 

 in the British Museum, and they agree most closely in form, though 

 larger in size, with those of D. ciiytus. They belonged, however, 

 most cevtainly to a species which was not "smaller than any which 

 lived subsequently in the south island," as Mr. Hutton affirms. 

 It cannot, therefore, yet be argued from them that the earliest 

 known Dinornithida; were smaller than those that succeeded them. 



The differentiation of Moa bones into genera and species solely 

 by the differences in their length and girth, I hold to be quite unre- 

 liable and misleading. Their form and outlines, I venture to think, 

 are the only characteristics by which they can be accurately 

 separated from each other. Before leaving New Zealand, I 

 had already commenced to protract on paper the prominent features 

 of the principal groups by referring them to rectangular co-ordinates 

 which were drawn through the corresponding points of all the bones. 

 By this method, I found that their points of agreement and 

 difference, quite apart from size, could be strikingly exhibited. 

 Professor T. J. Parker has recently contributed to the Zoological 

 Society in a paper to be published in its Transactions, a classification 

 of the Dinornithidae, solely based on the crania of these birds ; and 

 as he hopes, I believe, to supplement it by a paper on the remaining 

 bones of the skeleton, I trust he may give the suggestion I have made 

 here a trial. The method will, at all events, I think, be found to 

 afford an invariable standard of reference in describing the different 

 bones. His forthcoming paper has, it is satisfactory to know, 

 been collated with Mr. Lydekker's classification in the British 

 Museum Catalogue of Fossil Birds; while, on the other hand, it is 

 greatly to be regretted by all workers on this most difficult subject 

 that Mr. Hutton did not defer the pubUcation of this valuable paper, 

 in which has been brought together almost all the known information 

 on the Moa, till he had found time to compare his nomenclature with 



