IV.— GE OLO G Y, 



Art. L. — Tlic Moas of the North Island of New Zealand. 



By Captain F. W. Hutton, F.E.S., Curator of the 

 Canterbury Museum. 



IRead before the Philosophical Institute of Canterhuiy, 4th November, 



1896.] 



Plates XLVII. and XL VIII. 



The moas of the North Island are not so well known as 

 those of the South Island. This is partly owing to the 

 scarcity of their remains, and partly because they were the 

 first described. Sir E. Owen gave specific names to the 

 bones as they were sent to him, and was obliged to fit them 

 together by guesswork. Thus the leg-bones of his D. gracilis, 



D. dromceoides, and D. cnrttis belong, in each case, to two 

 distinct species, while D. didiformis and D. geranoides are 

 made up from the bones of three different species. Both Mr. 



E. Lydekker and I have tried to correct these mistakes, and . 

 the diiferences in our nomenclature arose almost entirely from 

 our having pursued different systems with Owen's composite 

 species. I took the metatarsus of each as the type of the 

 species, while Mr. Lydekker took the bone which had been 

 described first, no matter what it might be. Although my 

 plan was the simpler of the two, that of Mr. Lydekker was 

 more in conformance with the rule of priority, and, as his 

 publication is so much better known than mine, I have now 

 conformed to his rule, for all we want to get is a permanent 

 and generally-recognised nomenclature. Mr. Lydekker also 

 resuscitated Sir E. Owen's old name of Dinornis novce-zea- 

 landia and applied it to all the large individuals from the 

 North Island, remarking that "specimens belonging to more 

 than one species were included under this name. As the 

 first-mentioned specimen is a femur which is not absolutely 

 characteristic, it seems best to take the second tibia [of D. 

 ingens] as the type.'"''' But the femur first mentioned has a 



* " Catalogue of the Fossil Birds in the British Museum," p. 224. 



