PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE GENUS DINORNIS. 163 
“In 1844, at Wellington,’ writes Mr. Hamilton, “I was present, as Governor 
Fitzroy’s private secretary, at a conversation held with a very old Maori, who asserted 
that he had seen Captain Cook. Major Richmond, then Superintendent of Wel- 
lington, was, I think, also present. I cannot recollect who was the Governor's inter- 
preter. ‘This Maori (Haumatangi), so far as my memory now serves me, I should 
guess was 70 years old; at all events he was brought forward as one of the oldest 
of his people then residing about Port Nicholson, Being asked ‘Had he ever seen 
a Moa?’ he replied, ‘ Yes, he had seen the last one that had been heard of. When 
questioned as to what it was like, he described it as a very large tall bird, with a neck 
like a horse’s neck. At the same time he made a long upward stroke in the air with 
his right hand, raising it far above his head, and so as to suggest a very fair idea of 
the shape of a Moa’s neck and head, such as I have since seen them in the skeleton 
birds of the magnificent collection which Dr. Julius Haast has gathered together in the 
Canterbury Museum. There is no bird or animal of large size indigenous to New 
Zealand to which an old Maori could liken the Moa. The horse was probably the only 
creature imported by us in 1844 in which he could possibly find any kind of likeness 
calculated to give ws a fair general idea of the shape and height of the bird’s neck 
and head. If he had never himself seen a Moa, how—unless he had received its 
description, handed down from Maoris, who had seen one—could he possibly have hit 
upon such an idea as to refer us to the tall arched neck of the horse for a likeness ? 
The gesture which he made with his hand remains impressed upon my memory as 
freshly as if seen only yesterday, as one that was singularly descriptive. It was like a 
sketch being made, as it were, in the air” }. 
Reckoning, by a convenient, though somewhat artificial character, as a first dorsal 
the vertebra which first retains its pleurapophyses as independent movable elements, 
such vertebra (the sixteenth), in Dinornis maximus, answers to the eighteenth in 
Struthio, of which Prof. Mivart gives two instructive views (4 natural size) *. 
I subjoin a corresponding figure (figs. 25, 26), similarly reduced, of the first dorsal 
in Dinornis maximus. 
If the hypapophysis (fig. 26, hy) be taken as a guide, the present vertebra in Dinornis 
would answer to the nineteenth in Struthio, which is the second vertebra in that 
genus showing the single medial hypapophysis at this region of the spine, and asso- 
ciated with the articular facet, p, for the movable pleurapophysis. 
In Dinornis the parapophysis, p, is less produced forward or outward; the neural 
spine, 7s, is more elongated and inclines forward; it is also thicker, more quadrate 
in section. In another vertebra it is less elongate than in the figure and less inclined 
forward ; the costal surface, also on p, is likewise deeper and is subcircular in shape. 
1 « Notes on Maori Traditions of the Moa,” by J. W. Hamilton, Esq., ‘ Transactions of the New-Zealand 
Institute,’ vol. vii. 1875, p. 121. 
2 Loe. cit. p. 408, figs. 40, 41. 
VOL. X.—PaART 111. No. 5.—October 1st, 1877. 2A 
