374 PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE GENUS DINORNIS. 



Memoir, and by such second form of cranium and beak described in the present 

 Memoir. 



That mere shortness of wing and length of leg are no true characters of a natural 

 group, even when the legs are adapted for swift course on dry land, is evinced by the 

 singular short- winged Rail (Brachypteryx) at present existing in New Zealand, and 

 which was probably manifested on a larger scale by the allied genus Notornis, which 

 unquestionably belongs to the Rallida rather than to the Struthionidw. I have already 

 alluded to a small humerus, the only specimen of a wing-bone in Mr. Mantell's very 

 extensive collection, as presenting the same small proportion to the femur of Notornis, 

 which the humerus of Brachypteryx does to its femur. The grounds that lead me to 

 hesitate at present in pronouncing Dinornis proper to have been a gigantic form of the 

 Otididce or Bustard family in Cuvier's ' Pressirostral section' of Stilt-birds {Grulla;) are 

 the extreme difference in the form and proportion of the solid or rostral part of the 

 beak. In Otis this is so narrow above as to be trihedral, the upper margin rounded, the 

 lateral ones sharp, and it is as pointed at its termination as in the Porphyrio : the long 

 nasal part of the beak is straight, the arch not commencing until the fore-part of the 

 external nostril. The singular adze-shaped beak of Dinornis appears to be something 

 more than a mere adaptive modification of the pressirostral type of beak. This type 

 of beak, says Cuvier, " is strong enough to penetrate the ground in search of worms : 

 those species in which it is more feeble frequent meadows and newly-ploughed land, 

 where this food can be procured with greater ease : those that have stronger bills " — e. g. 

 the Bustards — ' ' subsist additionally on grain, herbage, &c. ' " But ' ' the unusual strength 

 of the neck in Dinornis indicates the application of the beak to a more laborious task 

 than the mere plucking of seeds, fruits or herbage^." I was led to make this remark 

 in my Memoir of 1843, and to suspect from other peculiarities of the skeleton, that the 

 gigantic bird of New Zealand might have found its sustenance in the farinaceous ferns 

 and fern-roots that abound in that island. I am tempted indeed to quote another 

 passage from my earlier Memoir by way of illustration of the claims of Comparative 

 Anatomy to the rank of an exact science by virtue of the predictive power with 

 which its rules maybe applied: "the still more robust proportions of their cervical 

 vertebrae," speaking of the gigantic species of Dinornis, " and especially of their 

 spinous processes, — so striking when contrasted with the corresponding vertebrae of the 

 Ostrich or Emeu, — may well have been the foundation of those forces by which the beak 

 was associated with the feet in the labour of dislodging the farinaceous roots of the ferns 

 that grow in characteristic abundance over the soil of New Zealand^." Now for this 

 kind of work what beak could be better adapted than one framed, as one might say, after 

 the model of the adze or pickaxe ? And, for the adequate attachment of such muscular 

 masses as the cervical vertebrie indicated, what modification of the ordinary avian 



' Begne Animal, i. p. 498. < Zool. Trans, iii. p. 269. ^ Ibid. 



