1882.] PROF. OWEN ON THE STERNUM OF NOTORNTS. 695 



Notornis is extinct in the North Island, but it still lingers, as we 

 have seen, in the South Island of New Zealand. A perfect skeleton 

 of the Norfolk- Island " Redbill " might show modifications, with 

 claims to specific distinction from N. mantelli, like those which have 

 been founded on the osseous remains of the extinct Moas of both 

 North and South Islands of New Zealand. Hitherto I have not 

 received remains of the genus Dinornis from any of the outlying 

 tracts of land which may be conceived to have once formed, with the 

 two New-Zealand islands, parts of a southern continent. Apteryx, 

 like Oajdrotnus, is still represented by existing species in both North 

 and South Islands. Considering the restricted powers of locomotion 

 of the several genera above cited, it may be inferred that the lands 

 yielding examples of such flightless birds were not, in their primitive 

 days, separated by such breadths of ocean as that which divides the 

 South Island from Lord Howe's Island, or as that known as " Cook's 

 Straits." We may conceive the lapse of time since the geological 

 forces occasioned such divisions of a southern continent to have 

 been so considerable as to have allowed the conditions originating 

 technical species to have led to the modifications which distinguish 

 the Northern from the Southern Moas, Kivis, and Wekas, and the 

 Southern Notornis from that which inhabited the land of Norfolk 

 Island. Lamarck's hypothesis of the way of work of the secondary 

 evolutional cause of Species, by the influence, viz., of circumstances 

 exciting or checking the exercise of parts, is more intelligible, more 

 applicable in connexion wih observed facts, to the before-cited orni- 

 thic cases than is Darwin's or Wallace's ' Natural Selection.' 



Passing from the origin to the extinction of species, I may remark 

 that the accomplished naturalist and ornithologist Professor Emile 

 Blanchard, referring to the abundance of remains of Dinornis in the 

 South Island of New Zealand, writes : — " Aussi est-il difficile de 

 croire que la destruction totale de ces remarquables creatures ait ete 

 accomphe par les Maories toujours clairsemes sur le littoral de I'lle 

 du Sud. Selon certaine probabilite, les evenements physiques ont 

 ete la cause premiere de cette destruction ;" and he infers that 

 " L'extinction de ces oiseaux gigantesques serait une nouvelle preuve 

 de I'effondrement du continent austral" ^ 



But it is not easy to conceive that birds commanding, like the 

 Moas, great powers of traversing dry land, would permit themselves 

 to be submerged, for example, with the sinking proportion of their 

 continent which has separated the North from the South Island of 

 New Zealand. The Maories may have decreased in numbers in the 

 portion so severed which was less favoured by climate and fertility. 

 But this would be likely to quicken their quest and improve their 

 ways of capture and slaughter of their great feathered flightless game. 

 The discovery in the grave of the ancient chief, interred at " Kai 

 Koras " in the South Island, of the egg of Dinornis ingens on 

 his lap ^, placed there, probably, for sustenance during his journey 

 to the " next world," testifies, with the scorched bones and fragments 



' C. E. Acad. Sc. 1882, p. 392. 



^ Memoirs on the Great Wingless Birds of New Zealand &c. p. 318, pi. cxvii. 



