328 PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE GENUS DINORNIS. 



No remnant of a Dinornis has yet been found in any of the contiguous islands, and I 

 have in vain searched for such in the recent collections of post-pliocene fossils from 

 Australia. 



The extraordinary number of Wingless Birds, and the vast stature of some of the 

 species, peculiar to New Zealand, and which have finally become extinct in that small 

 tract of dry land, suggest it to be the remnant of a larger tract or continent over which 

 this singular Struthious Fauna formerly ranged. One might almost be disposed to 

 regard New Zealand as one end of a mighty wave of the unstable and ever-shifting crust 

 of the earth, of which the opposite end, after having been long submei'ged, has again 

 risen with its accumulated deposits in North America, showing us in the Connecticut 

 sandstones of the Permian period the foot-prints of the gigantic birds which trod its 

 surface before it sank ; and to surmise that the intermediate body of the land-wave, 

 along which the Dinornis may have travelled to New Zealand, has progressively subsided, 

 and now lies beneath the Pacific Ocean. 



the size of a turkey, and from its habits, nature and other circumstances seems so closely to resemble the Dodo, 

 as to lead me to suppose it is the same; and lastly, a bird found in the southern parts of the Middle Island, 

 answering to the Emeu, although perhaps not so high. The gigantic Moa, whose bones are fully as large, 

 though not so ponderous, as those of the Elephant, is extinct, although everywhere traditions of its existence 

 are to be met with, coupled ^vith that of an equally enormous Land-Lizard : this large bird, though perhaps 

 twelve or fifteen feet high, was not tall in proportion to its size. Although the articulations of the bones are 

 many sizes larger than those of the Emeu, I have not yet met with a tibia longer than that of the Emeu of New 

 South Wales." 



Capt. Sir Everard Home adds, " I feel little doubt that the Dinornis exists in the Middle Island of New 

 Zealand, which is verj' thinly inhabited and almost quite unknown; perhaps also in Stewart's Island, where it 

 is said that the Cassowary (Moa?) is to be found." 



" H.M.S. North Star, Sydney, April 13th, 1844." 



