1893: THE MOAS OF NEW ZEALAND. 377 
were, as I was informed by the mine-driver who excavated them, 
obtained from tunnels far apart, and many feet further under the 
lava, at a different part of the quarry from where the metatarsal 
fragments were obtained. These fragments are quite insufficient to 
determine with anything like the accuracy employed throughout his 
paper by Mr. Hutton the length of the tibia, which is, notwith- 
standing, entered (without a mark of interrogation as if certainly 
ascertained) as 12 inches. The chances are almost infinite against 
the two pieces being parts of the same bone. In speaking of these 
two fragments of tibia (which I examined carefully in the matrix, 
but found too imperfect to dare to identify), I say that they ‘‘ were, 
undoubtedly, portions . . . of one of the greater forms.” I should 
have expressed myself more accurately if I had said they were 
‘“‘undoubtedly not one of the smaller forms.’ As regards the 
metatarsal fragments which Mr. Hutton has assigned to 
this species, apparently for the reason that they were found in the 
same quarry, I have carefully compared them with the collection 
in the British Museum, and they agree most closely in form, though 
larger in size, with those of D. curtus. They belonged, however, 
most certainly to a species which was not “smaller than any which 
lived subsequently in the south island,” as Mr. Hutton affirms. 
It cannot, therefore, yet be argued from them that the earliest 
known Dinornithide were smaller than those that succeeded them. 
The differentiation of Moa bones into genera and species solely 
by the differences in their length and girth, I-hold to be quite unre- 
liable and misleading. Their form and outlines, I venture to think, 
are the only characteristics by which they can be accurately 
separated from each other. Before leaving New Zealand, I 
had already commenced to protract on paper the prominent features 
of the principal groups by referring them to rectangular co-ordinates 
which were drawn through the corresponding points of all the bones. 
By this method, I found that their points of agreement and 
difference, quite apart from size, could be strikingly exhibited. 
Professor T. J. Parker has recently contributed to the Zoological 
Society in a paper to be published in its Tvansactions, a classification 
of the Dinornithide, solely based on the crania of these birds; and 
as he hopes, I believe, to supplement it by a paper on the remaining 
bones of the skeleton, I trust he may give the suggestion I have made 
here a trial. The method will, at all events, I think, be found to 
afford an invariable standard of reference in describing the different 
bones. His forthcoming paper has, it is satisfactory to know, 
been collated with Mr. Lydekker’s classification in the British 
Museum Catalogue of Fossil Bivds; while, on the other hand, it is 
greatly to be regretted by all workers on this most difficult subject 
that Mr. Hutton did not defer the publication of this valuable paper, 
in which has been brought together almost all the known information 
on the Moa, till he had found time to compare his nomenclature with 
