2 PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE GENUS DINORNIS. 
Williams', more or fewer toe-bones have, nevertheless, been associated ; and, as their 
numbers increased, their determination became facilitated. Already in the partial 
restoration of the Dinornis giganteus in pl. 30 of my memoir of 1843, I had ventured to 
sketch the probable proportions and disposition of the phalanges in each of the three 
anterior toes, guided by the analogy of the Apteryx, in building up that part on the 
basis of the few specimens of phalanges that then suggested the probability of such 
analogy being correct. 
Each successive acquisition of additional phalanges has tended to support my original 
supposition of the general resemblance of the foot of the Dinornis to that of the Apteryz : 
and the rich acquisition of remains from Waikawaite in the Middle Island, transmitted, 
in 1849, by the late Col. Wakefield, has enabled me to recompose the entire skeleton of 
the foot of three species of Dinornis and Palapteryx, the largest appertaining to that 
great bird which I had indicated in my memoir of 1846, p. 327, as probably being ‘a 
well-marked variety’ of the Dinornis giganteus. 
No specimens precisely corresponding with the characteristic femur, tibia and meta- 
tarse of the Dinornis giganteus have, as yet, been transmitted from the Middle Island : 
the homologous bones of similar size from Waikawaite present more robust proportions ; 
and this difference is not only well-marked in the metatarse of the entire foot figured in 
Plate I., but is accompanied by a well-marked articular rough depression for the liga- 
mentous attachment of the rudimental metatarsal of the back-toe (hallux), and also by 
that characteristic bone of the genus Palapteryz (fig. 1, 1). 
The general differences in the proportions of thickness to length will be appreciated 
by comparing the metatarse of Palapteryx robustus, fig. 1, in Pl. L., with the metatarse of 
Dinornis giganteus, vol. iii. pl. 27. fig. 1. : 
The subject of Pl. I., which was obtained, like most of the bones transmitted by 
Col. Wakefield, from the recent vegetable deposits at the mouth of the Waikawaite, is 
in a much better state of preservation than the bones obtained from the more ancient 
beds of the actual rivers in the North Island, described by the Very Rev. Archdeacon 
Williams, in vol. iii. p. 237. The relative age of the present North and Middle Islands 
of New Zealand, the question of their original union and of the period of their separation 
—in short, all the geological and geographical deductions from the evidence of their 
organized fossils — depend for their true solution upon a rigorous comparison and 
exact determination of those fossils, and the progress of science will be proportionally 
retarded by hasty and erroneous ascription of names to such fossils by those who may 
have neither the leisure, the opportunity, or the skill for such comparisons. 
The principal dimensions and general form of the tarso-metatarsal bone of the Pal- 
apteryx robustus are given in Pl. I. fig. 1, where the anterior surface is represented of the 
natural size; other dimensions are recorded in the text. The compound nature of 
this bone in birds generally is described in vol. iii. p. 243, and I may here premise that 
* Vol. iii, p. 237. 
