EXTINCT ANIMALS 



ostrich. He ventured then to pubUsh that this 

 bone was a proof that there existed formerly in 

 New Zealand a huge terrestrial bird hke the os- 

 trich, only bigger. After a fcAV years, more bones 

 were sent to Owen from New Zealand, which 

 entirely confirmed what he had said : and in the 

 course of a few years he was able to put to- 

 gether from the bones sent a skeleton with 

 enormous legs and neck, the skeleton of the 

 ostrich-like bird the ^loa of New Zealand. In 

 Fig. 44 you see Professor Owen himself at the 

 side of the restored skeleton. Since that time 

 a great number of these birds have been found 

 buried in the morasses and comparatively 

 recent deposits of New Zealand, showing that 

 many of them existed alive some five or six 

 hundred years ago, and that they were then 

 probably hunted out of existence by the an- 

 cestors of the present Maoris. I shall have a 

 few more words to say about the giant birds of 

 New Zealand in a later chapter. 



In Fig. 45 we have the photograph of a very 

 fine preparation in the Natural History Museum, 

 showing the skeleton of a man and a horse 

 side by side. The main object of this com- 

 parison is to show that, though so different in 



70 



