182 ANIMAL SKETCHES. CHAP. xn. 



the Islands, found several of the large struthious birds in 

 possession of the country. And they had no quadrupeds 

 to contend with, for New Zealand has not a single 

 indigenous mammal. Many a feast did they have on the 

 flesh of the heavy, simple-minded birds ; and so these 

 strange avian forms of life were gradually exterminated, 

 like the great awk of the Northern Atlantic, and the quaint 

 old dodo of Mauritius. Thus only the swift-footed kiwi 

 remained of all the struthious birds in New Zealand. 



Not inferior in size to the quaint moas of New Zealand 

 was the huge sepiornis of Madagascar. If we may judge 

 from the size of the egg, and of such bones as have been 

 found, he must have been a monster indeed. Fancy an 

 egg measuring two feet six inches round, and capable of 

 containing somewhat more than two gallons of liquid, in 

 bulk somewhere about eight times that of the ostrich ! 

 Such was the egg of the Madagascar sepiornis. 



In all these birds the wings were exceedingly rudimen- 

 tary, and in some cases perhaps, as in the great moa, 

 altogether wanting ; in all the breast-bone had the raft-like 

 form devoid of keel, though there may in some cases be 

 hints of its former existence in the ancestors of these 

 birds ; in all the feathers were probably loose and plu- 

 mose, or long, narrow, and hair-like, as in the kiwi of New 

 Zealand. 



Oh, that some unusually intelligent ostrich could seize 

 a pen and write for us the history of his race there 

 have been unconventional folk in the ranks of writers ere 

 now, what a strange tale he would unfold ; of their 

 development from more ordinary carinate birds of flight, 

 of their dispersal throughout the wide world, and of 

 the geological and geographical changes they had wit- 

 nessed. Unfortunately the beasts and birds cannot tell us 

 their own tale, and it is left for the naturalist to piece 

 it together as best he may. 



