[ 257 ] 



XVI. On Dinornis (Part XXIV.): containing a Bescripfioji of the Head and Feet, 

 with their dried Intcffmnents, of an Individual of the sj)ecies Dinornis didinus, 

 Owen. By Professor O-sven, C.B., F.B.S., F.Z.S., dx. 



Received June lltb, read June 20th, 1882. 



[Plates LIX.-LXI.] 



JLHE subjects of the present Part tend to complete, in an unlooked-for degree, the 

 characters of a Moa almost as they might be studied in a living or recent specimen. 



I cannot refrain from expressing the pleasure I have exiaerienced in being spared to 

 make such closer acquaintance with a subject of an early communication to the 

 Society', which has given admission, with liberal illustrations, to so many successive 

 contributions to the natural history of the great extinct terrestrial birds of New 

 Zealand. 



The parts now before me consist of the head and a continuous part of the neck, with 

 the trachea, enclosed and covered by the dried integument ; also of the bones of both 

 legs, with the feet, covered by tlieir dried skin, with the claws, and some feathers, of a 

 species of Moa, of about the size of Binornis didiformis, but with diiferences in com- 

 parable parts leading me to refer it to a nearly allied species, Binornis didinus. 



These specimens were obtained by Mr. H. L. Squires, at Queenstown, South Island 

 of New Zealand, and are briefly noticed, as parts of one individual, in a number of the 

 ' Tuatara Times,' published at Otago, November 1878, but without an indication of the 

 place where or the person by whom they were discovered. They were transmitted by 

 Mr. Squires, May 20th, 1882, to the British Museum. With the head are attached, 

 by tegument or ligament, fourteen cervical vertebrae. 



The length of tlie skull (PI. LIX. figs. 1-3), from the tip of the upper mandible to 

 the indication of the occipital crest, is 4 inches 10 lines ( = 122 millim.); that of the 

 lower mandible, from its fore end to the indication of the angular process is 4 inches 

 (=100 millim.). The dried tegumentary nostril (ib. n) has a longitudinally ovate form, 

 gradually contracting forward, and inclining obliquely inward, to within 10 lines 

 (=22 millim.) of the tip of the beak; the fore border is not defined; but the orifice, or 

 nostril, to the extent to which the integument is preserved, shows a length of 9 lines 

 (=20 millim.), with an extreme vertical breadth of 5 lines ( = 10 millim.); the inter- 

 space between the outer nostrils, taken at their mid length, is 6 lines ( = 12 millim.). 

 From the beak-tip to the fore part of the tegumentary orbit (ib. o) is 2 inches 9 lines 

 ' Transactions of the Zoological Society, vol. iii. p. 29 (1839). 



VOL. XI. — PAET VIII. No. 4. — January, 1883. 2e 



