236 



Received from the Courtis Fund. 



Figures of Molluscous Animals. By Maria Emma Gray. 

 Volsr2, 3, 4. London, 1850. 



Annals and Magazine of Natural History. No. 52, for 

 April, 1852. Vol. IX. 8vo. London. 



Annals and Magazine of Natural History. Vol. IX. No. 53, 

 for May, 1852. London. 



Annals and Magazine of Natural History. Vol. IX. No. 54, 

 for June, 1852. London. 



July 1, 1852. 



Dr. D. H. Storer, Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Dr. Kneeland read a paper on the bones of the lower 

 extremity of a gigantic bird, from New Zealand, recently 

 presented to the Society by Mr. Henry Cross, of Boston. 



The size of the bones, which a very slight examination would 

 determine to be the bones of a bird, must strike every one, they 

 being very much larger than those of the largest Ostrich, the only 

 bird with which they could be compared. It was only in 1839, that 

 Mr. Owen determined, from the examination of a fragment of a 

 thigh-bone, that a gigantic race of birds once existed in New 

 Zealand ; and in his Memoirs, in the Zoological Society's Trans- 

 actions, he has since, from a large number of specimens, deter- 

 mined at least eleven species belonging to three distinct genera^ 

 ranging in height from two or three to twelve feet, or to nearly 

 twice the height of the Ostrich. The genus to which Mr. Owen 

 referred these birds, he called Dinornis ; this he has since 

 divided into three, adding Palaj)teryx and Apiornis. The name 

 given them by the natives, is Moa. 



These bones are not fossils, that is, they are not mineralized ; 

 in common with specimens analyzed in Mr. Owen's papers, they 



