384 PEOFESSOR OWEN ON THE GENUS DINOENIS. 



From the proportions of the femur of Bromornis I infer also that those of the tibia 

 and metatarse would be longer and more slender than in Dinornis elephantoims, and in 

 a greater degree than is the case with the femur. Consequently the stature of Bro- 

 mornis would be greater in proportion to the solitary bone by which we now know it 

 than is that of the Dinornis elefhantopus. We may therefore have a comfortable 

 assurance that it indicates the former existence in Australia of a bird nearly of the 

 stature of the Ostrich, but with relatively shorter and stronger hind limbs. 



The period at which this large wingless bii'd trod that singular land was that at 

 %vhich the elephantine Marsupial {Diprotodon) flourished. I have received remains of 

 both this genus and the somewhat smaller pachydermal Marsupial {Nototheriimi) from 

 the mass of drift and boulder deposit when this had been reached, at depths equal to 

 that yielding the bird's fossil at Peak Downs, in the shaking of wells in Queensland. 



The mineralized condition of these herbivorous mammalian fossils has suggested a 

 comparison of them with the fossil remains of Saurian Eeptiles from Oolitic and even 

 older Mesozoic beds in England. Yet the Mollusca which have left their shells with 

 the petrified Australian bones are of the same species as those still living in the fresh 

 waters of the Condamine and its tributary creeks, in the bed of which so many evidences 

 of extinct Marsupial life have been discovered. 



From the general analogy, not unfrequently pointed out, between the recent animal 

 and vegetable forms of the Australian continent and the extinct ones of the European 

 Oolitic beds, together with the massive mineralized condition of the ornithic and mam- 

 malian fossils found deep in the enormous superficial accumulations of drift and 

 trappean alluvium, we are led to surmise that Australia, or parts of that continent, 

 have not been subject to the frequent movements by which the earth's crust has been 

 modified in the European continent, but that it may have been subject exclusively to 

 the subaerial conditions of change from the period of the Oolitic deposits in our 

 hemisphere. Thus the Bromornis of Queensland may have been contemporary with 

 the impressoi's of the ornithicnites of Connecticut. 



DESCEIPTION OF THE PLATES. 



PLATE LXIL 



Bromornis australis. Eight femur : nat. size. 



Fig. 1. Front view. 



Fig. 2. Ectotrochanterian surface of femur. 



PLATE LXin. 



Fig. 1. Back view of the same femur. 



Fig. 2. Form of transverse section of middle of the shaft. 



Fig. 3. Form of transverse section of the same part of the femur of Bi7i. elephantopus. 



