498 PEOFESSOR OWEN ON THE GENUS DINORNIS. 



the opportunity of inspecting the feraui-, tibia, and metatarse figured in Plates LXXXIX. 

 and XC, of the natural size, which had been discovered in August, 18G5, on the Glen- 

 mark Estate of " Kermode & Co.," about forty-five miles from Christchurch, Canter- 

 bury Settlement, Middle Island, New Zealand. They were discovered, in the course of 

 ruiniiug a di-ain across a bog or swamp, about 4 feet below the surface, in such juxta 

 position as to lead to the inference that they were bones of the same leg (the left) ; and 

 their dimensions a little exceed those of the bones on wliich I had previously founded 

 the variety or species Dinornis maximus. They are such, indeed, as to lead me to 

 believe that the proposed specific term may be a safe one. I can hardly concei\e 

 that any bones as much larger than these as they are in comparison wdth Dinornis 

 gifjanteus remain to be discovered in New Zealand — that land of these strange giants 

 of the feathered class. 



To have evidence of a bird as large as the Ostrich of Africa, from so comparatively 

 small a tract of territory, seemed to me in 1839 the most wonderful result of the deter- 

 mination of the bone figured in plate in., Volume III., of the ' Zoological Transactions.' 

 When I subsequently received a femur surpassing in length that of the struthioid 

 species {Dinornis struthioides^) by 2 inches, I called the species Dinornis inqens'; then 

 receiving a femur of the length of 15 inches, with other leg-bones to match, I proposed 

 for it the term Din. giganteus^. Leg-bones equalling those of Dinornis gigantcus in 

 length, but in all cases exceeding them in thickness, and from an island where bones 

 of the true Dinornis giganteus have never been found, represent the species called 

 Dinornis rohustus^; and now, having almost exhausted the vocabulary of terms expres- 

 sive of hugeness, I venture on the superlative for the species represented by the bones 

 which form the subject of the present Memoir. 



Femur. (Plate LXXXIX. fig. 1.) 



This presents all the generic characters of that bone in Dinornis'. The roundness of 

 the shaft, the thickness of the walls of the medullary cavity, the absence of pneumatic 

 foramina, the thickness of the shaft, and breadth of the articular extremities, especially 

 of the distal one, in proportion to the length of the bone, the tuberous " linese asperte " 

 on the back of the shaft (PI. LXXXIX. fig. 1), the production of the anterior inter- 

 muscular ridge from the lower end of the longitudinally extended thick and rugged 

 pretrochanterian ridge, the rough, deep, well-defined fossa at the upper and fore part 

 of the femoral shaft, the still deeper ecto-gastrocnemial fossa, and the very wide rotular 

 chamiel — each and all of these Dinornithic characters of the avian femur are strongly 

 marked in the present species. The surface, on the head of the femur, for the attach- 



' Trans. Zool. Soc. vol. iii. pi. 21. fig. .3. (Length 10".) - Ibid. fig. 1. (Length 12".) 



Mbid. p. 2.50. (Length 15'.) Mbid. vol. iv. pi. 1. fig. 1. (Length 14" 0"'.) 



* Ibid. vol. iii. p. 247. 



