[ 381 ] 



XI. On DiNOKNis (Part XIX.) : containing a Description of a Femur indicative of a new 

 Genus of large Wingless Bird (Dromomis' australis, Owen) from a post-tertiary 

 deposit in Queensland, Australia. By Professor Owen, F.B.S., F.L.S., &c. 



Bead June 4th, 1872. 



[Plates LXII. and LXIII.] 



In 1836 Sir Thomas Mitchell, F.G.S., Surveyor-General of Australia, discovered in the 

 breccia-cave of Wellington Valley a femur, wanting the lower end, mutilated and in- 

 crusted with the red stalagmite of the cave, which I determined to belong to a large 

 bird, probably, from its size, struthious or brevipennate, but not presenting characters 

 which, at that time, justified me ia suggesting closer affinities. Three views of this 

 fossil, of rather less than half the natural size, formed the subject of pi. 32. figs. 12, 13, 

 of my " Paleeontological Appendix" to Mitchell's work^ 



The length of this fossil was 13 inches, the breadth of the middle of the shaft was 

 not quite 3 inches. 



In 1869 the Eev. W. B. Clarke, F.G.S., Government Geologist of the Province of 

 New South Wales, made known the interesting discovery of a femur, nearly 12 inches 

 in length, during the digging of a well at Peak Downs, in Queensland^ 



The well was sunk through 30 feet of the black trappean alluvial soil common in 

 that part of Australia, and then through 150 feet of drift pebbles and boulders, on one 

 of which boulders ("at that depth," 150 feet?) rested a short, thick femur, so filled 

 with mineral matter (calc spar and iron pyrites) as to give the internal structure more 

 the appearance of a reptilian than an ornithic bone*. 



Mr. Clarke submitted this fossil to the able Curator of the Australian Museum, 

 Sydney, and states that " Mr. Krefft has compared it with a collection sent over from 

 New Zealand by Dr. Haast, and has been enabled to determine it to be a bone 

 belonging to Dinornis." The communication is accordingly headed " Binornis, an 

 Australian genus." 



So exceptional an extension of New-Zealand forms of life to the Australian continent 

 greatly added to my desire of further and more intimate acquaintance with this second 

 evidence of a large extinct Australian bird — more especially as the femora of Binornis 

 received from New Zealand subsequently to the publication of Mitchell's work led me 

 to perceive, from the antero-posterior compression of the shaft and the sessile position 

 of the head in the femur from the Wellington- Valley cavern, that it resembled that 

 bone in the Emu rather than in the Dinornis. 



My wishes on this point, as on others connected with the palaeontology of Australia, 



' Spofjos, cursus, ipvis, avis. ' Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, vol. ii. 8vo, 1838. 

 ' "Dinornis, an Australian Genus," Geological Magazine, vol. vi. (1869) p. 383. * Loc. cit. p. 383. 



