OF NEW ZEALAND. 83 



Owen to belong to a I'orm allied to the Ostrich, or more closely to t\w. 

 Apteryx, or wingless bird of New Zealand, but of far more gigantic pro- 

 portions than either of them. The natives have a tradition that it be- 

 belonged to a kind of Eagle which they called "Movie," or sometimes 

 "Moa." Quantities of similar bones have since been found buried be- 

 neath the muddy banks of the rivers of New Zealand. The fragment 

 exhibited at this meeting contained so much of its original animal matter 

 as to prohibit the idea of classing it as a Fossil. But as there is no in- 

 stance known of such an enormous bird having been met alive, the dis- 

 covery of its remains became a matter of peculiar interest, on account 

 of its very recent extinction, and the fact of a similar fate having over- 

 taken the Dodo, which is a species closely allied to it in its anatomical 

 structure. 



In 1842 Dr. Buckland received some additional information, from a 

 friend residing at Poverty Bay in Nevv Zealand, who sent with his com- 

 munication several cases of bones belonging to this bird. They were 

 collected from the mud of the banks and of the bed of the river at low 

 water, where they lay a few inches below the surface. From all the 

 collections made, there could be distinctly enumerated portions of thirty 

 ditlerent skeletons, from which it was inferred that they had formerly 

 been very numerous. The longest bone of any hitherto found, was a 

 tibia, (corresponding to the large bone of the fore leg of the human 

 skeleton,) being 2 feet and 10 inches. A femur proportionate to this 

 tibia should measure at least 17 inches. Allowing the whole skeleton 

 to have its various other parts constructed upon a similar scale, it has 

 been estimated that the animal it belonged to could not have been less 

 than 14 or 16 feet high. It is also supposed, from its skeleton, to have 

 possessed, for a bird, a very low grade of organization, especially in the 

 form and structure of its lungs, and to have approached in this respect more 

 nearly to the reptiles than any other of the great divisions among animals. 



Every accessible fact in its history, as made out, proves the Dinornis 

 JVovcB Zealandia: to be the most gigantic of known birds, and probably 

 confined to that part of the world alone in which its remains are found. 



The gentleman who forwarded these bones referred to above, to 

 London, remarked in his letter, that in a conversation which he had held 

 with an American gentleman concerning them, the latter declared the 

 bird to be still living near Cloudy Bay in Cook's Straits. lie proceed- 

 ed to state that the natives there had mentioned to an Englishman be- 

 longing to a whaling party, that there was a bird of enormous size to 

 be seen only at night on the side of a hill near that place, and being ac- 

 companied by a native guide and a -i^ccond Englii^hman ihe wiiulc party 



