r 52 ] 



wings very short and rounded, plumage feeble, legs and feet more 

 adapted for the land than those of the ordinaiy rails ; plumage 

 rich purple on neck, breast, and abdomen, back and wings decked 

 with green and gold, tail scanty and white beneath ; beak and legs, 

 when the bird was alive, bright scarlet. 



AN ENORMOUS EGG. 

 In the Museum was the cast of an egg of enormous size. This 

 was in reality a fac-simile of an egg of the ^piornis Maximus (a 

 supposed extinct bird of Madagascar), in the possession of Mr Dawson 

 Rowley, of Brighton, who had published a pamphlet upon it. Some 

 idea of its comparative size might be gathered when it was stated that 

 it would take 148 fowl's eggs to equal it. The idea respecting this 

 egg was that it was laid by a bird of far larger size than the Dinornis, 

 and, if not still existing in the unexplored parts of Madagascar, that 

 it had not been extinct more than a couple of centuries. Professor 

 Owen, speaking of the eggs of this bird, in a paper read before the 

 Zoological Society in 1852, entitled " Notes on the egg and young 

 of the Apterix, and on the casts of the eggs and certain bones of 

 the .^piornis," thought it very unscientific to estimate the size of 

 a bird from the size of its egg, and proceeded to show, first that the 

 egg of the Apterix might have led to a supposition of its having 

 been laid by a much larger bird ; and secondly, that from a 

 comparison of the bones, the ^piovnis did not equal in size the 

 Dinornis Giganteus. 



BREVIPENNATE BIRDS. 



Little more than 200 years ago there was on the islands of 

 Mauritius, Bourbon, and Rodiguez sundry brevipennate birds, the 

 Dodo, Solitaire, &-c., in great abundance, and, till recently, only a 

 head, a couple of feet or so, and a few bones, with some paintings, 

 were all that remained to tell us of a vei-y interesting group of 

 brevipennate birds. Much interesting matter respecting these 

 would be found in a work in their Library, " The Dodo and its 

 kindred." The living specimen of the Dodo exhibited in Loudon in 

 1639 passed into the hands of Tradescant, and, when his museum 

 was presented to the University of Oxford by Ashmole, it contained 

 a perfect stuffed dodo. On January 8th, 1755, by an oi-der of the 

 Yice-Chancellor and his co-trustees, it was ordered to be burnt, the 

 head and foot alone escaping destruction. Excavations made in 



