174 PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE GENUS DINORNIS. 
Dr. von Haast has followed his ornithological countryman’s procedure in a further 
generic subdivision of the Dinornithide. 
Dinornis didiformis—the type of Reichenbach’s genus Anomalopteryx (1850)—is the 
type of Von Haast’s genus Meiornis (1874). The Eurapteryx of Von Haast (1874) 
is the Syornis of Reichenbach (1850), both represented by Dinornis caswarinus. 
My Dinornis curtus is the type of Reichenbach’s genus Cela: his genus Movia has 
Dinornis ingens for the type. The old generic term Dinornis is restricted by Reichen- 
bach to the species D. struthioides ; and D. giganteus is referred to a genus Moa (1850). 
These generifications of the accomplished author of the ‘ Handbuch der speciellen 
Ornithologie’ have not met with acceptance or favour at the hands of subsequent 
systematists. Whether the parallel labours of Dr. von Haast will be more fortunate 
remains to be seen. 
Returning to my more congenial task of Comparative Anatomy, if Plate XXXII. 
or the reduced outlines of the sternum in species of Dinornis (cut, fig. 35) be compared 
with the figures of the sternum of Struthio in Mivart’s figs. 77-79, the straightness of 
the anterior border and the smallness of the contiguous coracoid grooves (0, 0’ in Plate 
XXXII.) contrast with the undulate contour of the same border and the length of those 
grooves (¢, ¢) in Struthio, which almost meet at the mid lme. The body of the breast- 
bone is more convex and bulging in the Ostrich; the lateral processes (called ‘ xiphoid,’ 
and marked Ja by Mivart) are absolutely and relatively much shorter; the medial 
posterior processes, which seem to me more analogous to the mammalian ‘xiphoid’ 
(Plate XXXII. g, 9), are wanting in Struthio; and instead of the mid notch (ib. 2), 
there is, in Struthio, an obtuse production. 
The costal border shows differences, as in longitudinal extent, in accordance with the 
greater number of sternal ribs to which it gives attachment in Struthio; this border 
differs also in breadth and in the complexity of the articular surfaces, corresponding, in 
Struthio, to the more expanded and subbifid sternal ends of five of the six pairs of 
sternal ribs which articulate therewith in that existing form. 
The sternum of Apteryx conforms much more closely to the type of that bone in 
Dinornis than does the sternum in any other known species of bird. Modification has 
reigned in the peripheral prehensile portion of the cephalic extremity of the vertebral 
column. 
To the side view? of “the sacral and caudal vertebree of a young Ostrich”? Prof. 
Mivart* has added a hemal (* ventral’ or lower) view (fig. 60, Joc. cit.) and a neural 
‘ «Address to the Philosophical Institute of Canterbury,” in the ‘ Lyttelton Times’ of Friday, March 6th, 
1874; reprinted in the ‘ Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute,’ vol. vi. June 1874, p. 419. 
* «Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton,’ 8yo, 1848, p. 159, fig. 27. 
* * Descriptive Catalogue of the Osteological Series contained in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons 
of England,’ 4to, 1853, p. 266, no. 1885. 
* «The Museum of the College of Surgeons fortunately possesses a preparation of the sacral vertebre (figs. 
58, 59, 60, and 61) of a young Ostrich in an unanchylosed condition, which enables the serial description of 
