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X. On Dinoryis (Part XVIII.): containing a Description of the Pelvis and Bones of 
the Leg of Dinornis gravis, By Professor Owrn, F.R.S., F.Z.S., &e. 
Read May 7th, 1872, 
[Puates LVIII, to LXI.] 
IT is with feelings akin to compunction that I come again before the Society with 
claims to place the record of a fifteenth species of Dinornis in a volume of its Trans- 
actions. I have hesitated for some years in completing this step, tentatively ventured 
in 1869". But I have no alternative; for I do not see my way, on present experience 
of the value of characters from leg-bones, to attach thereto other interpretation of 
those about to be described than that which has led me, in the British-Museum Lists, 
to refer them to a Dinornis gravis. 
The fourteen extinct species of terrestrial or wingless birds proposed in preceding 
Memoirs being characterized by bones only, and chiefly, or mostly, by those of the hind 
limbs, might well be deemed by ornithologists to require subsequent confirmation 
before they received general acceptance. Remarks by some esteemed friends, emment 
in that branch of natural history, significant of their reticence or expectant attitude, 
have not surprised me, and ought not. 
I look forward with equal interest, at least, to the result of further acquisitions of 
these remarkable and unexpected evidences of avian life in the old times of New Zea- 
land; and I believe myself ready and willing to yield up any of my species, should 
intermediate sizes of femur, tibia, and metatarsus, without distinct and well-marked 
modifications of form or proportion, prove the Dinornis struthioides, e.g., to be an 
immature Dinornis ingens, or this to show merely a stage of growth of Dinornis 
giganteus. 
I can only say that I prepared myself to grapple with the problem of these bones by 
a comparison of all accessible materials showing age-characters in the femur, tibia, and 
metatarsus of the known existing struthious birds, and have noted’ and represented* 
some of the characters by which the leg-bones, say of an immature Ostrich, might be 
detected and discriminated from bones of the same size of the Emu, Rhea, or 
Cassowary. 
It was not until I had satisfied myself that characters as distinctive as those observable 
in the leg-bones of the existing large species of Cursores or Struthionide were present 
? Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. vii. part 2, p. 141, ? Th. vol, iii. p. 243 (1843). 
3 Tb. vol. iii. pl. 28. figs. 1 & 2. 
VOL, VIII.—PART VI. May, 1873. 3 F 
