PROFESSOR OWEN OX THE GENUS DINORNIS. 163 



" In 1844, at Wellington," writes Mr. Hamilton, " I was present, as Governor 

 Fitzroy's private secretary, at a conversation held with a very old Maori, who asserted 

 that he had seen Captain Cook. Major Richmond, then Superintendent of Wel- 

 lington, was, I think, also present. I cannot recollect who was the Governor's inter- 

 preter. This Maori (Haumatangi), so far as my memory now serves me, I should 

 guess was 70 years old ; at all events he was brought forward as one of the oldest 

 of his people then residing about Port Nicholson. Being asked ' Had he ever seen 

 a Moa 1 ' he replied, ' Yes, he had seen the last one that had been heard of.' When 

 questioned as to what it was like, he described it as a very large tall bird, with a neck 

 like a horse's neck. At the same time he made a long upward stroke in the air with 

 his right hand, raising it far above his head, and so as to suggest a very fair idea of 

 the shape of a Moa's neck and head, such as I have since seen them in the skeleton 

 birds of the magnificent collection which Dr. Julius Haast has gathered together in the 

 Canterbury Museum. There is no bird or animal of large size indigenous to New 

 Zealand to which an old Maori could liken the Moa. The horse was probably the only 

 creature imported by us in 1844 in which he could possibly find any kind of likeness 

 calculated to give tis a fair general idea of the shape and height of the bird's neck 

 and head. If he had never himself seen a Moa, how — unless he had received its 

 description, handed down from Maoris, who had seen one — could he possibly have hit 

 upon such an idea as to refer us to the tall arched neck of the horse for a likeness 1 

 The gesture which he made with his hand remains impressed upon my memory as 

 freshly as if seen only yesterday, as one that was singularly descriptive. It was like a 

 sketch being made, as it were, in the air" ^ 



Reckoning, by a convenient, though somewhat artificial character, as a first dorsal 

 the vertebra which first retains its pleurapophyses as independent movable elements, 

 such vertebra (the sixteenth), in Linomis maximus, answers to the eighteenth in 

 Strutliio, of which Prof. Mivart gives two insti'uctive views {\ natural size) 2. 



I subjoin a corresponding figure (figs. 25, 26), similarly reduced, of the first dorsal 

 in Binomis maximus. 



If the hypapophysis (fig. 26, liy) be taken as a guide, the present vertebra in Binomis 

 would answer to the nineteenth in Stntthio, which is the second vertebra in that 

 genus showing the single medial hypapophysis at this region of the spine, and asso- 

 ciated with the articular facet, p, for the movable pleurapophysis. 



In Binomis the parapophysis, 2>, is less produced forward or outward ; the neural 

 spine, ns, is more elongated and inclines forward; it is also thicker, more quadrate 

 in section. In another vertebra it is less elongate than in the figure and less inclined 

 forward ; the costal surface, also on p, is likewise deept r and is subcircular in shape. 



' " Notes on Maori Traditions of the Moa," by J. W. Hamilton, Esq., ' Transactions of the New-Zealand 

 Institute,' vol. vii. 1875, p. 121. 



= Loe. cit. p. 408, figs. 40, 41. 

 VOL. X. — PART III. No. 5. — October 1st, 1877. 2 A 



