1882.] PROF. OWEN ON THE STERNUM OF NOTORNIS. 695 
Notornis is extinct in the North Island, but it still lingers, as we 
have seen, in the South Island of New Zealand. A perfect skeleton 
of the Norfolk-Island “ Redbill’’ might show modifications, with 
claims to specific distinction from N. mantelli, like those which have 
been founded on the osseous remains of the extinct Moas of both 
North and South Islands of New Zealand. Hitherto I have not 
received remains of the genus Dinornis from any of the outlying 
tracts of land which may be conceived to have once formed, with the 
two New-Zealand islands, parts of a southern continent. <Apferyz, 
like Ocydromus, is still represented by existing species in both North 
and South Islands. Considering the restricted powers of locomotion 
of the several genera above cited, it may be inferred that the lands 
yielding examples of such flightless birds were not, in their primitive 
days, separated by such breadths of ocean as that which divides the 
South Island from Lord Howe’s Island, or as that known as “‘ Cook’s 
Straits.’ We may conceive the lapse of time since the geological 
forces occasioned such divisions of a southern continent to have 
been so considerable as to have allowed the conditions originating 
technical species to have led to the modifications which distinguish 
the Northern from the Southern Moas, Kivis, and Wekas, and the 
Southern Notornis from that which inhabited the land of Norfolk 
Island. Lamarck’s hypothesis of the way of work of the secondary 
evolutional cause of Species, by the influence, viz., of circumstances 
exciting or checking the exercise of parts, is more intelligible, more 
applicable in connexion wih observed facts, to the before-cited orni- 
thic cases than is Darwin’s or Wallace’s ‘ Natural Selection.’ 
Passing from the origin to the extinction of species, I may remark 
that the accomplished naturalist and ornithologist Professor Emile 
Blanchard, referring to the abundance of remains of Dinornis in the 
South Island of New Zealand, writes :—‘ Aussi est-il difficile de 
croire que la destruction totale de ces remarquables créatures ait été 
accomplie par les Maories toujours clairsemés sur le littoral de |’Ile 
du Sud. Selon certaine probabilité, les événements physiques ont 
été la cause premiére de cette destruction; and he infers that 
* L’extinction de ces oiseaux gigantesques serait une nouvelle preuve 
de l’effondrement du continent austral”’?. 
But it is not easy to conceive that birds commanding, like the 
Moas, great powers of traversing dry land, would permit themselves 
to be submerged, for example, with the sinking proportion of their 
continent which has separated the North from the South Island of 
New Zealand. The Maories may have decreased in numbers in the 
portion so severed which was less favoured by climate and fertility. 
But this would be likely to quicken their quest and improve their 
ways of capture and slaughter of their great feathered flightless game. 
The discovery in the grave of the ancient chief, interred at “ Kai 
Koras”’ in the South Island, of the egg of Dinornis ingens on 
his lap*, placed there, probably, for sustenance during his journey 
to the “next world,” testifies, with the scorched bones and fragments 
1 ©. R. Acad. Se. 1882, p. 392. 
* Memoirs on the Great Wingless Birds of New Zealand &c., p. 318, pl. exyii. 
