Birds of Madagascar. 269 



but which, at no very distant period, scoured its plains, and 

 must have been very prominent and striking members of its 

 avifauna. 



It was in the year 1850 that a very large bird's egg and 

 some fragments of bones were first discovered by a M. Abadie 

 in the southern part of Madagascar, and excited great interest 

 among naturalists. Subsequently other eggs were found, 

 and in 1868 M. Grandidier discovered in the marshy soil at 

 Ambolintsatrana, on the west coast of Madagascar, the tibia, 

 femur, toe-bones, and some vertebra of a bird, corresponding 

 in size with the fragments previously obtained^ and evidently, 

 from their proximity, belonging to the bird which laid these 

 great eggs. It became clear from the shape and struc- 

 ture of these portions of the skeleton that they were parts of 

 a bird allied to the Ostrich, and still more nearly to the Moa 

 or Dinornis of New Zealand. The egg is remarkable as far 

 exceeding in size any previously known egg, for the longer 

 axis is no less than V2\ inches, with a smaller axis of 9| 

 inches ; while the size of the largest known Ostrich e^^ is 

 only Q\ inches by 5 inches. In capacity this Madagascar 

 egg is therefore equal to six Ostrich eggs and to 150 average- 

 sized Hen^s eggs. This e^^, however, does not appear to 

 have been laid by the largest of known birds, living or ex- 

 tinct, for the leg- and toe-bones are not so long as those of 

 the New-Zealand bird, which was, so far as our present in- 

 formation goes, the most gigantic of all feathered creatures'^. 



This Madagascar bird, which was named by Isidore Geoffrey 

 Saint-Hilaire^^>*?/or/M*5, appears to have been about as large 

 as the largest Ostrich, but with extremely massive leg- and 

 toe-bones, so that it was probably endowed with great speed 

 on foot, but, like all the Struthiones, would be incapable of 

 flight. No complete skeleton has yet been discovered, and 

 we still know nothing of the form of the cranium and of the 

 vertebrae of the neck. Enough, however, has been ascertained 

 from the other bones to enable it to be said that the jEpyornis 



* So far as the evidence at present available allows us to judge, the 

 Madagascar bird did not exceed 6 ft. 6 in. in height, wliile the Moas 

 varied from 8 ft. 2 in. to 9 ft. 10 in. 



