Forbes. — On Avian Bcmai)is found near Timaru. 369 



The quarry-face does not exhibit the bed, D, next below 

 the clay ; but the manager of the works showed me where he 

 had sunk a pit in tlie floor of the quarry, the debris of which 

 was lying on the surface as a heap of red shingle and gi-avel, 

 wliic'h was met with a few feet below the sm-face, and con- 

 tinued as far as his digging extended. 



The quarry has been worked to obtain rock in large blocks 

 for the breakwater ; and to this end blasting has been carried 

 on from long tunnels driven at right angles into the face of 

 the quarry in bed C, underlying the dolerite. During the 

 driving of these tunnels, partly in its softer portion below the 

 laterite, and partly also in the laterite itself, the osteological 

 remains which INIr. Stubbs showed me appear to have been 

 found, and certainly those found later on by Mr. Jolni Miller, 

 the foreman of the blasting operations. This intelligent 

 quarryman was good enough to permit me to remove to 

 ('hristchurch for some weeks, for examination and identifica- 

 tion, the bone-fragments he had exhumed. He showed me 

 also the site of the tunnel in which he had discovered them. 

 I was not myself fortunate enough to find any identifiable 

 bones, or see any of them disinterred ; but from amid the ex- 

 cavated clay I picked out a few chips showing undoubted 

 osseous structure resembling that of the bones already 

 found. 



Most of the bone specimens were in a perfect state of 

 preservation, and those of them that had been imbedded in 

 the clay below the laterite looked, when cleared from their 

 matrix, no older than the best -preserved moa- bones from 

 caves or from turbaries. A few seemed to have been sub- 

 jected to a greater or less degree of calcination. The col- 

 lection made by Mr. Miller contained the following recogniz- 

 able portions : — 



1. The right femur (fig. 2) of a species of Aptevjjx indistin- 

 guishable from Aptcryx australis. This specimen is imbedded 

 in the lower part of the laterite layer, and appears to have 

 suffered somewhat from heat. It is the most perfect of the 

 bones recovered yet. It is entire except for the loss of part 

 of the wall at its outer face — whereby its internal texture 

 is revealed — and for a slight deformity due probably to 

 pressure. 



2. A portion of the distal end of a tarso-metatarsus of a 

 species of Dinornis, which might have belonged to D. curtiis. 



3. The proximal end of a tarso-metatarsus of a species of 

 Dinornis, which might have been owned by D. cinius or D. 

 didiformis. 



4. A fragment (fig. 3) of the pelvis of a species of Dinornis 

 smaller than those to which 2 and 3 belonged, which fits very 

 well with the corresponding part of D. owcni. 



24 



