﻿198 Bibliography. 



lation, sagaciously seized upon by Prof. Owen, must be when rightly 

 interpreted, almost as sure as mathematics. The skeleton or a large 

 part of it was found, and is figured in this memoir of the natural size, 

 and it corresponds almost exactly (for the broken femur belonged to 

 D. struthoides, which was about the size of the ostrich) to the predic- 

 tions of the Professor. 



In calling the Dinornis a Struthious bird, the author had in fact made 

 it essentially apterous, or wingless, since this is a general character of 

 the family. But says Prof. O., " it has appeared strange and almost 

 incredible to some, that the cancellous texture of the shaft of a thigh 

 bone should give, to speak mathematically, the presence or absence of 

 wings. But if the negative had been premature and unfounded, a 

 guess rather than a demonstration, its fallacy might have been exposed 

 by the very next bone of a Dinornis transmitted from New Zealand. 

 A bird of flight has as many wings as legs : it has two humeri as well 

 as two femora, two radii as well as two tibiae, two ulna; as well as two 

 fibulae ; the humerus and radius are usually, and the ulna is always 

 longer and larger than their analogues in the hind extremities ; then 

 also there are the two distinct carpal bones, a metacarpus and char- 

 acteristically modified phalanges. The chances were thus greater, that 

 the next bone of an extremity discovered in the alluvium of New Zea- 

 land would have been one of the anterior members, had these been de- 

 veloped to serve as wings in the Dinornis. But what is the fact? 

 Eighteen femora, eleven tibiae, and six tarso-metatarsi, with two toe 

 phalanges, have been consecutively discovered, and not a trace of any 

 part of the osseous frame-work of a wing ; not a fragment of scapula, 

 of humerus, or of the bones of the fore-arm or hand." 



In all apterous birds the rudiments of wings remain. In the Apteryx, 

 careful dissection alone can discover them. They are never developed 

 in the Emeu ; and " from the known relations of 'the development of 

 the air-cells to that of the anterior members in existing Struthionidae," 

 the author infers that "the wings were more rudimentary in the Dinor- 

 nis than in the Emeu, but not quite so minute in proportion to the body 

 as m the Apteryx." Curious logic this, to one ignorant of comparative 

 anatomy. But we doubt not it will prove to be infallible. 



rom a minute examination of the forty seven bones sent from New 

 and, and a sa gacious application of the fruitful law of correlation, 

 the author is led, first, to distinguish the Dinornis from all the living 

 truthiomdae ; and secondly, to make out five or six species of the ge- 

 nus, lhe tarsometatarsal bone of the Dinornis distinguishes it in one 

 way or another from all the living Struthionid* ; but only a skillful 



spe a cr iSt h W ° Uld ^^ b6en aMe t0 make ° Ut a11 the differences. The 

 P ci c c aracters are derived, not merely nor chiefly from a difference 



