72 DR. MANTELL ON THE DISCOVERY OF NOTORNIS. 



my son, however, expresses his beUef in the native accounts, and that if the creature 

 no longer exists, its extermination is of very recent date. 



In concluding this brief narrative of the discovery of a living example of a genus of 

 birds once contemporary with the colossal Moa, and hitherto only known by its fossil 

 remains, I beg to remark, that this highly interesting fact tends to confirm the conclu- 

 sions expressed in my communications to the Geological Society, namely, that the 

 Dinornis, Palapteryx, and related forms, were coeval with some of the existing species 

 of birds peculiar to New Zealand, and that their final extinction took place at no very 

 distant period, and long after the advent of the aboriginal maoris. As my son at the 

 date of his last letter was about to depart on another exploration of the bone deposits 

 of the North Island, I indulge the hope that he will ere long have the gratification of 

 transmitting or bringing to England additional materials for the elucidation of the ex- 

 tinct and recent faunas of New Zealand. 



With much pleasure I resign to Mr. Gould the description of the ornithological cha- 

 racters and relations of this, in every sense, rara avis, from the Isles of the Antipodes. 



