792 ROC 



St. Hilaire exhibited to the French Academy of Sciences {Comptes 

 Eendus, xxxii. pp. 101-107 ; Eng. transl. Ann. Nat. Hist. ser. 2, vii. 

 p. 161) some fossils — two eggs and a few fragments of bone, which 

 had just been brought to Paris from Madagascar by Capt. Abadie, 

 — referring them to a bird which he named yEjjyornis maximus and 

 declared to be a " Rudipenne " — or allied to the Ostrich. He soon 

 after republished {Ann. Sc. Nat. Zool. ser. 3, xiv. pp. 205-216) his 

 original remarks, together with some additional information of con- 

 siderable interest to the effect that, in 1832, Sganzin, who resided 

 for some years in Madagascar, sent thence to Jules Verreaux, then 

 at Capetown, a full-sized drawing of a gigantic egg, but this was 

 lost at sea with all his collections ; while in 1834, Goudot, another 

 traveller in that island, obtained some fragments of egg-shells which 

 Gervais had mentioned in 1841 {Did. Sc. Nat. Suppl. i. p. 524) as 

 resembling Ostriches'. In 1861, Prof. Bianconi {Mem. Accad. Bologna, 

 xii. pp. 61-76) seriously took up the question of the identity of the 

 Roc, described by some one to Marco Polo (for the great Venetian 

 himself did not see it) ; of the " Chrocko " (which is only another 

 form of the same word) mentioned on the map of Fra Mauro (1450) 

 whose egg was as big as a butt ; and of the jEpyornis of ornithology, 

 declaring the latter to be no Struthious bird but a Vulture — an 

 opinion which he steadily maintained throughout a long series 

 of papers. The matter has therefore attracted some scientific 

 attention, especially as other remains have come to light ; but none 

 can doubt after the masterly treatise of MM. Alphonse Milne- 

 Edwards and Grandidier {Ann. Sc. Nat. ser. 5, xii. pp. 167-196, 

 pis. 6-16) that the original determination was right; and therefore, 

 according to the views taken in the present work, a group or Order 

 jEpyornithes should be recognized as of equal rank with the 

 Struthiones and others that form the Subclass Ratit^^e. A consider- 

 able number of eggs, which from their enormous size — being the 

 largest eggs known — are conspicuous objects, and no small number 

 of fossil bones have now been discovered, and have been attributed 

 to five species of which jS. maximus, medius and modestus are 

 indicated by the eminent naturalists last named, who think it 

 possible that one of the smaller species may have survived long 

 enough for a tradition of its existence to be transmitted, especially 

 since some of the bones found shew marks of a cutting instrument, 

 evidently the work of a human hand and presumably made on the 

 recently-killed bird.^ Sir Henry Yule {Book of Ser Marco Polo, ii. 

 pp. 346-354) treated the question in his usual happy style and, 



^ They cite from a French work of fiction published in 1696 under the title 

 of Furteriana a passage describing enormous birds inhabiting Madagascar and 

 there carrying off sheep and human beings, so that the latter had to walk about 

 with tame tigers for their own protection ! This modern embellishment of the 

 old Arabian stories is hardly an improvement if probability is to be regarded. 



