238 



for more than an inch, evidently corresponding to tlie tarsus ; 

 perhaps a natural separation of the epiphysis of an immature 

 bird. On the inner edge of the posterior surface, on the lower 

 half of the bone, is a shallow, rough depression, an inch long 

 and half an inch wide, which Dr. Kneeland believed to be for 

 the attachment of the metatarsal bone of the fourth or hind toe ; 

 this would remove the species from Dinornis, and place it in 

 Palapteryx. The lower extremity divides into three articular 

 surfaces for the three anterior toes. The length of this bone, 

 entire, would be about seventeen inches ; the breadth of the 

 upper end is four and one fourth inches. 



There are also two joints of the external toe, in length six 

 inches. From the different appearance of these bones, Dr. Knee- 

 land thought they did not belong to the same individual ; they 

 are all bones of the right leg. Dinornis comes near to the Bus- 

 tard and the Grallse. Palapteryx comes near to the Struthionidaj, 

 and perhaps is intermediate between the Apteryx and the New 

 Holland Emeu. 



Dr. Kneeland believed some of the bones to be those of an 

 undescribed species, to which he gave the name "ilfq/or," until 

 it should be proved to be a species previously described. The 

 height of the bird to which these bones belonged must have 

 been about nine and a half feet. 



The tracks made by these birds would be twenty-two inches 

 long and six wide, considerably larger than the largest foot- 

 prints in the New Red Sandstone of the Connecticut Valley, dis- 

 covered by President Hitchcock in 1836, which he pronounced 

 to be footprints of giga ic birds. The discovery of these 

 gigantic birds in New Zealand, with their wingless bodies, and 

 reptile-like condition of the respiratory apparatus from the non- 

 permeability of the bones to air, adds strongly to the evidence 

 that similar low forms of large birds existed in America at the 

 remote epoch of the New Red Sandstone. 



Though many of these bones are apparently to be regarded 

 as of recent date, and though it is not impossible that the Dinor- 

 nis, like the Apteryx, may still exist in the interior of New 

 Zealand, still they undoubtedly belong to a certain extent to the 

 class of extinct animals. Dr. Mantell thinks they belong to a 

 period as remote in relation to the surface of New Zealand, as 



