Birds. 9193 
turn up in some bog or banks of a river. Rheas were seen by 
Mr. Darwin swimming across the Santa Cruz River where it was four 
hundred yards wide, with a rapid stream. Sturt came upon two emeus 
in the same way in the Murrurbridge in Australia, and one of the 
great eggs was at least washed out by a stream. Bones of the New 
Zealand giant were found in a morass, and in such a situation I should 
search in Madagascar. 
It is strange that so colossal a creature could have lived in modern 
days and yet escape notice. M. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, quoting 
Mr. Strickland (‘ Annals of Natural History,’ No. 23, November, 1849, 
p- 338), states that M. Dumarele, a French merchant, sent an account 
of an enormous egg, in 1848, to M. Joliff, surgeon of the “ Geyser.” 
This was seen by him in Madagascar at Port Leven, but he could not 
buy it of the natives, as it belonged to a chief of the Sakalawas tribe, 
and on account of its rarity was held in great estimation by them. 
Most likely M. Dumarele’s specimen is one of those in Paris. . 
Perhaps the bird, though probably now extinct, has not been so 
more than two hundred years, as some of the cartilages, according to 
the French account received by me with the egg, were still adhering to 
the bones when found. The condition of the shell, perhaps, can hardly 
be called semi-fossil: it is said to be three times the thickness of the 
ostrich’s. Of all the bones in a bird, we could scarcely have selected 
one more valuable than the metatarsal to Science, as indicative of fixed 
ornithological laws, which is so far most fortunate. * * * 
Just-as this paper was going to the press, my attention was called to 
Mr. Strickland’s translation of M. J. G. Saint-Hilaire’s pamphlet, in 
‘ Annals and Magazine of Natural History,’ 2nd Series, No. 39, March, 
1851, p. 161, and also Professor Owen's remarks upon the same subject, 
in the above periodical, No. 75, March, 1854, p. 229. Neither of these’ 
papers had I seen, nor was I previously aware of their existence. 
I therefore append a portion of Professor Owen’s valuable remarks. 
He gives the following admeasurements of the Paris eggs:— 
Ovoid egg. Ellipsoid egg. 
ft. in. lin. ft. in. lin. 
Greatest circumference lengthwise i elo. 9 2 9...6 
Breadthwise ; : Eee : noe 4°93 tO 
Extreme length in a straight line . Pe One LE KOWS 
“The portions of bones, of which casts were exhibited” (at the 
Zoological Society), “consist of the lower end of the right and left 
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