OlANTS AVD PlOMIfia. 



05 



in New Zealand (whence the specimen came) of the same 

 character as the fragment. These, wlien put together, revealed 

 the skeleton of an ostrich like bird of the proportions supposed. 

 To this was given the name Diiiomis gigantcus. Of this wo 

 saw a fine specimen in the New Zealand court of tlie Centennial 

 Exhibition. 



As we would expect, Sir Julius Haast of the Museum of 

 Canterbury, Christ Church, the Commissioner of New Zealand, 

 had a fine display of skeletons at the Colonial and Indian 

 Exhibition, and also the egg of a moa, the last of the giants. 

 The first skeleton with tiie specimen hone is now in the museum 

 of the Royal College of Surgeons. Other museums on both 

 sides of the Atlantic have been enriched by tlie generosity of 

 Sir Julius. Our own museum has the greater part of a skeleton 

 of Dinornis (jiganteus, and an almost whole skeleton of Divornie 

 cassuarnis, the smallest of the giants, with leg bones of 

 Dinornis elephantopus, Dinornis rlidiformis, Dinornis rheides. 

 The race became extinct at no distant time. Tiiey were proba- 

 bly destroyed by the Maories. 



At the Paris Exhibition, 18G7, there were exhibited in the 

 Venezuala department of the Argentine Republic two eggs 

 (shells) of the gigantic ^pgornis of Madagascar. Each was 

 over a foot in diameter. Plaster casts of similar eggs are to be 

 seen in the Natural History Museum, South Kensington. The 

 eggs of the ^)?yom^'s would not bo pigmaean beside the Roc's 

 egg of Sinbad's Adventures in the " Thousand and One Nights," 

 of the Arabian Story Teller.. 



69. The earliest authentic record we have of the existence 

 of giants of the human race, is the Biblical. In Genesis, 

 chapter vi., verse 4, we read: "The Nephilim were in the 

 earth in those days," that is in the post-glacial and pre-diluvian 

 period. In the post-diluvial we have other Nephilim. AVe 

 read in Numbers, chapter xiii., verse 32, of " men of stature," 

 verse 33. The Nephilim, sons of 'anak, of the Nephilim. In 

 Deut, chapter ii,, verse 10, we have "the Emim, a people 

 great and many, and tall as the 'anakim." Verses 20, 21, '* The 

 Zanizummin, a people great and many, and tall as the 'anakim." 



