572 Reviews. | July, 
refutation ; he has propounded no misty, indefinite, unintelligible 
theory ; he has made two assertions that anybody may understand— 
Ist. That species have arisen by divergence in descent from a com- 
mon stock ; 2nd. That the direction of the divergence has been deter- 
mined on utilitarian principles. It is inconceivable that such a theory 
can long remain undecided. It is a reproach to science, that the 
materials for its support or refutation are not at hand in over- 
whelming plenitude. From a Rhizopod to an elephant, from a par- 
ticle of red snow to a Wellingtonia, every organism invites the 
inquirer after truth to come and hear what it has to say upon the 
question. The fact is, that naturalists have been too much occupied 
with systems of classification, and with establishing their various per- 
sonal claims to scientific honours ; and now the work that might have 
been done long ago, remains to be done; for Mr. Darwin himself 
would be the last man in the world to assert that he had arrived at 
anything like a demonstration. He has, however, succeeded in giving 
the great problem a most unexampled prominence ; the rising genera- 
tion will probably possess its satisfactory solution. 
PAMPHLETS. 
Tuer CotossaL Brrp or Mapacascar.* 
Ty the year 1850, a French ship-captain, named Abadie, being on the 
south-east coast of Madagascar, observed in the hands of a native the 
shell of a gigantic egg, which had been perforated at one of its ex- 
tremities and employed for domestic purposes. M. Abadie being 
attracted by the unusual dimensions of the egg, set to work to procure 
specimens of it, and ultimately succeeded in obtaining from the 
natives, besides the example first seen, two others. One of these was 
found in the débris of a recent land-slip, the other was disinterred from 
a recent alluvial formation, together with some bones of apparently no 
less gigantic size.— Upon these objects, which were shortly afterwards 
forwarded to Paris, the late Professor Isidore Geoffroi St. Hilaire 
founded a new genus and species of extinct Struthious birds, allied to 
Dinornis, for which he proposed the name, Afpyornis maximus.| The 
most striking character of the eggs of A’pyornis is their enormous 
size. The largest of the two received at Paris measured in circum- 
ference lengthwise no less than 2 feet 10 inches, and breadthwise 2 feet 
4 inches. Its extreme length in a straight line was about 12 inches. 
Professor Geoffroi St. Hilaire estimated that it would contain 104 
quarts, or nearly as much as six ostrich-eggs. <A large ostrich egg, 
we may mention, measures only about 61 inches in length, being little 
more than half that of the Apyornis. But it would be very hazardous, 
* «A Paper upon the Egg of ASpyornis Maximus, the Colossal Bird of Mada- 
gascar. By George Dawson Rowley, M.A. 
+ Compt. Rend. de l’Ac. Se., 1851, Jan. 27. 
