FEATHERED GIANTS 119 



extermination of the Maori. The theory has been ad- 

 vanced, with much to support it, that the big birds 

 were eaten off the face of the earth by an earlier race 

 than the Maoris, and that after the extirpation of the 

 Moas the craving for flesh naturally led to cannibalism. 

 But by whomsoever 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 Madagascar, 

 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 unlikley 

 that legends of the ^Epyornis, 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 bearing away an ele- 

 phant in its talons, while the ^Epyornis has shed its 

 wings and shrunk to dimensions little larger than an 

 ostrich, but this is the inevitable result of closer ac- 

 quaintance and the application of a two-foot rule. 



Like the Moa the ^Epyornis seems to have lived 

 in tradition long after it became extinct, for a French 

 history of Madagascar, published as early as 1658 

 makes mention of a large bird, or kind of ostrich, 

 said to inhabit the southern end of the island. Still, 

 in spite of bones having been found that bear evident 

 traces of the handiwork of man, it is possible that this 

 and other reports were due to the obvious necessity of 

 having some bird to account for the presence of the eggs. 



