188 Miscellanea. 
e “ by the diversities of proportion as by an inequality of 
eight. 
Can so gigantic a species, which has lived without doubt in times 
not far remote from our own, and of which it cannot even be asserted 
that it has entirely disappeared from the surface of the globe,* 
have remained so long, to the present day, without anything having 
revealed its existence to the naturalists of Europe ? We could not 
postpone, until the appearance of the memoir which we intend to 
publish on the Z'pyornis, adverting to some indications relative to 
this bird which science already possesses. 
Shall we place Flacourt amongst the number of the authors who 
have known, at least by hearsay, the gigantic bird of Madagascar? 
Is it the A’pyornis which that celebrated traveller mentioned, two 
centuries ago, under the name of Vouron-Patra ? ‘It is,” he says, 
“a large bird which haunts the Ampatres, and lays eggs like an 
Ostrich; itis a species of Ostrich. ‘Those ofthe said places are not 
able to take it: it seeks the most desert places.’ It is hardly 
necessary to add, that a passage so vague may quite as well, and 
better, apply to a bird of a high stature, but nevertheless lower 
than that of the Ostrich, as to a species so gigantic as the Apyornis. 
If Flacourt did not know the A’pyornis, there is at all events 
another French traveller who unquestionably heard speak of it, 
and who even saw one of its eggs, very similar to those which 
we have described above. In one of the additions which Mr. 
Strickland has recently madet to his remarkable work on the Dodo.§ 
is found a document formerly considered as fabulous, but whose 
scientific interest is now placed beyond a doubt. Under the title 
“‘ Supposed existence of a gigantic bird at Madagascar,” Mr. Strick- 
land has given a curious relation, made in 1848, by a French 
merchant, M. Dumarele, to M. Joliffe, Surgeon of the Geyser, and 
which the latter extracted from his private journal; M. Dumarele 
stated that at Port-Leven, on the north-west end of the Isle of 
Madagascar, he saw a gigantic egg, the shell of which was as thick 
as a Spanish dollar, and which held “the almost incredible quantity 
of thirteen wine quart bottles of fluid.” M. Dumarele offered to 
purchase the egg and send it to Europe; but the natives declined 
selling it, as it belonged to their chief, and on account of its extreme 
rarity. Thus M. Dumarele was unable to produce any proof in 
support of his statement, and, without casting any suspicion on his 
veracity, it was thought that he might have been imposed upon by 
the natives. 
According to these natives, who were of the race of Sakalavas, 
the gigantic bird of Madagascar still existed, but was extremely 
rare. In other parts of the island, on the contrary, its present 
existence is not credited; but at least a very ancient tradition is 
met with relative to a bird, of colossal size, which threw down an 
ox and devoured it; it is to this bird that the Madagascans attribute 
* The Notornis, at first known by subfossil debris, and regarded as an 
extinct species, has lately been found alive in New Zealand, See Ann. Nat, 
Hist, for November 1850, p. 398. 
+ Histore de la grande Ile de Madagascar, edit. of 1758, p. 165. 
+ The Annals and Mag. of Nat. Hist. No. 23 (November 1849), p. 338. 
§ The Dodo and its Kindred, Lendon, 1848. 
