188 PROFESSOR OWEN ON THE GENUS DROMORNIS. 



specific gravity, than any bone of Dinornis which I have hitherto received. It is sup- 

 posed to have come from a cave in Mount Gambier, Soutli Australia; but I can only 

 speak with certainty as to the locality, not as to the circumstances of its discovery. 



One cannot, of course, state confidently that it is a bone of the same species of bird as 

 the mutilated femur from the Cave of Wellington Valley i, or of that from the drift at 

 Peak Downs, in Queensland ^. 



But the relation of size to these bones, and the difference of proportion to the tibia of 

 Dinornis exemplified in the above-given admeasurements, oppose no obstacle to the 

 reference, rather support it, and bear out the inference hazarded in a former paper ^. 

 I believe, therefore, that Ornithology may confidently add another genus of gigantic 

 birds to the unwinged group — a genus which existed and has become extinct in the 

 Australian continent, and which had closer kinship with the still existing struthious 

 genera of that continent than with the extinct Moas of New Zealand . 



DESCEIPTION OF THE PLATE. 



PLATE XXXIII 



Distal portion of tibia of Bromornis australis. 

 Fig. 1. Back view. 

 Fig. 2. Front view. 

 Fig. 3. Inner side view. 

 Fig. 4. Broken end of shaft, showing thickness of wall and size of medullary cavity. 



' Mitchell's ' Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia,' 8vo, " PalEEontologieal Appendix,'' 

 pi. 32. figs. 12, 13 (1838). 



' Trana. Zool. See. vol. viii. p. 384 (1872). 



' " From the proportiona of the femur of Dromomis I infer also that those of the tibia would be longer 

 and more slender than those of Dinornis eUjphantopus." 



