396 PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE GENUS CNEMIORNIS. 
Some portions of ribs had been collected, corresponding in the size and relative 
position of the capitular and tubercular joints with the answerable articular surfaces on 
the dorsal vertebree: the size of the costal articular surfaces on the margins of an 
otherwise small and keel-less sternum similarly supported the inference that it belonged 
to the same bird, and that this was one of those singularly numerous feathered species 
of New Zealand that were without the power of flight. 
Finally, there was a humerus which, from the feeble development of its proximal 
processes, had evidently belonged to some such flightless bird. ‘The size of this bone 
was, indeed, disproportionately small compared with the tibia, according to the ordi- 
nary avian skeleton, but it bore nearly the same proportion to the sternum as does the 
humerus in Notornis, and rather a larger proportion to the leg-bones than in the Emeu. 
I, therefore, have strong faith in the accuracy of the reference of all the bones from the 
limestone fissure above enumerated to the same species, if not the same skeleton; the 
more so, as there were no other bones of other species sufficiently similar in size to the 
leg-bones, pelvis, and vertebrae, to which the keel-less sternum and feeble humerus 
could be supposed to belong. 
The bird of the Middle Island of New Zealand, about the size of the Mooruk, and 
now, perhaps, extinct, will be shown, I believe, by the characters of so much of its 
skeleton as has been obtained, to have been the type of a genus unknown to science ; 
and for which I propose the name Cnemiornis’, indicating the present species by the 
term calcitrans, as being capable of kicking much more violently than the Apteryz, 
after full allowance for difference of size. 
Cervical Vertebre. 
Of the cervical vertebrae, some (Pl. LXIII. figs. 1 & 2) present a remarkable expanse 
of the neural arch (nm), which may be 2 inches 6 lines across, the smallest transverse 
diameter of the centrum (fig. 4, c) being but 5 lines. In such a vertebra the centrum 
sends down a short, compressed hypapophysis (ib. h) from its hinder part. The length 
of the centrum is 1 inch 9 lines; it expands, being concave and smooth below, toward 
the anterior articular surface (figs. 1 & 2, c'), and to each side of this expanded part the 
pleurapophysis (figs. 1, 2 & 4, pl) is confluent, completing a vertebrarterial canal (ib. v), 
almost as wide as the neural one (n); the prezygapophyses (zs) are wide apart, looking 
upward and forward; a horizontal plate of bone (figs. 3 & 4, 7z) extends from each to 
the postzygapophysis (z'), expanding and forming a slightly thickened, convex border (d) 
before its termination ; there is a low and strong tuberosity (figs. 1 & 3, t) above each 
postzygapophysis ; at the back of the neural platform is a low, compressed, neural 
Kyun, tibia, opys, avis: in composition, enemi, as in “anticnemion,” “ gastrocnemius,” &c., signifying the 
genus of wingless birds remarkable for the size of the processes of the tibia. For the opportunity of describing 
this series of bones I am indebted, as for the skull of Dinornis robustus from the same locality, to Dr. Davip 
S. Price. 
