CHAPTER XV. 



GIANT BIRDS. 



"To discover order and intelligence in scenes of apparent wildness and 

 confusion is the pleasing task of the geological inquirer." — Dr. Paris. 



Of all the monsters that ever lived on the face of the earth, the 

 giant birds were perhaps the most grotesque. An emu or a 

 cassowary of the present day looks sufficiently strange by the side 

 of ordinary birds ; but " running birds " much larger than these 

 flourished not so very long ago in New Zealand and Madagascar, 

 and must at one time have inhabited areas now sunk below the 

 ocean waves. 



The history of the discovery of these remarkable and truly 

 gigantic birds in New Zealand, and the famous researches of 

 Professor Owen, by which their structures have been made known, 

 must now engage our attention. 



In the year 1839 Professor Owen exhibited, at a meeting of 

 the Zoological Society, part of a thigh-bone, or femur, 6 inches in 

 length, and 5^ inches in its smallest circumference, with both 

 extremities broken off. This bone of an unknown struthious 

 bird was placed in his hands for examination, by Mr. Rule, with 

 the statement that it was found in New Zealand, where the 

 natives have a tradition that it belonged to a bird now extinct, 

 to which they give the name Moa. Similar bones, it was said, 

 were found buried on the banks of the rivers. 



A minute description of this bone was given by the professor. 



