144 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



with much to support it, that the big birds 

 were eaten off the face of the earth by an ear- 

 lier race than the Maoris, and that after the 

 extirpation of the Moas the craving for flesh 

 naturally led to cannibalism. But by whom- 

 soever the destruction was wrought, the result 

 was the same, the habitat of these feathered 

 giants knew them no longer, while multitudes 

 of charred bones, interspersed with fragments 

 of eggshells, bear testimony to former barbaric 

 feasts. 



It is a far cry from New Zealand to Mada- 

 gascar, but thither must we go, for that island 

 was, pity we cannot say is, inhabited by a 

 race of giant birds from whose eggs it has been 

 thought may have been hatched the Roc of 

 Sindbad. Arabian tales, as we all know, lo- 

 cate the Roc either in Madagascar or in some 

 adjacent island to the north and east, and it is 

 far from unlikely that legends of the ^Epyor- 

 nis, backed by the substantial proof of its 

 enormous eggs, may have been the slight 

 foundation of fact whereon the story-teller 

 erected his structure of fiction. True, the Roc 

 of fable was a gigantic bird of prey capable of 



