﻿Bibliography. 197 



rians find it to capture this valuable bird, that if they succeed in killing 

 one every year, they consider themselves amply compensated for the 

 fatigues of a march to the Doondoo plains. 1 ' 



The party soon fell in with four more Doondoos, two of which were 

 killed by the fire-arms, and in consequence of his great skill, the next 

 day Mr. Jacobs was crowned by the chiefs and army of Carwary, and 

 decorated with the plumes and beak of the bird. 



Mr. Jacobs makes no pretensions to being a naturalist. But if the 

 preceding statements can be depended upon, is not the probability strong 

 that we have here an account at least of an undescribed species of 

 Struthionidse, if not a species of Dinornis ? Unless indeed, it be the 

 Cassowary, which we know to be crested. But from that species Mr. 

 Jacobs expressly distinguishes the Doondoo. 



(2.) This paper of Professor Owen affords us some beautiful and in- 

 structive examples of the iconderful principle of correlation of struc- 

 ture in animals. — Cuvier maintains that " a single bone, or articular 

 facet of a bone," would often enable the comparative anatomist to re- 

 construct the whole animal, so mathematical are the relations between 

 the bones. But his successor, M. De Blainville, has endeavored to de- 

 preciate and throw doubt over this principle, in his " Osteographie." 

 Prof. Owen agrees with Cuvier, and the Dinornis has afforded him a 

 triumphant example of the truth of the principle. For at first he had 

 only the shaft of a femur, six inches long, from which to determine 

 the character and size of the animal. He found "a coarse cancellated 

 structure continued through the whole longitudinal extent of the frag- 

 ment." And he adds, " there is no bone of a similar size, which pre- 

 sents a cancellous structure so closely resembling that of the present 

 bone, as does the femur of the Ostrich; but this structure is interrupted 

 in the Ostrich at the middle of the shaft where the parietes of the me- 

 dullary, or rather air cavity, are smooth and unbroken. From this 

 difference I conclude the Struthious bird indicated by the present frag- 

 ment, to have been a heavier and more sluggish species than the Os- 

 trich ; its femur and probably its whole leg was shorter and thicker." 

 And on such reasoning, which intelligent men unacquainted with com- 

 parative anatomy would certainly pronounce to be mere moonshine, 

 does the author add, as already quoted, " So far as my skill in inter- 

 preting an osseous fragment may be credited, I am willing to risk the 

 reputation for it on the statement, that there has existed, if there 

 does not now exist, in New Zealand, a Struthious bird nearly, if not 

 quite, equal in size to the Ostrich." 



These statements the author published in 1839 ; and now, if the 

 skeleton of such a bird should have been afterwards found in New 

 Zealand, what better proof could we have that the principle of corre- 



