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VII. On Megalapteryx hectori, a new Gigantic Species of Apterygian Bird. 

 By Julius von Haast, G.M.G., Ph.D., F.B.S., G.M.Z.S. 



Received April 2nd, 1885, read June 2nd, 1885. 



[Plate XXX.] 



X 1 OR many years past it has been a source of astonishment to me that we should find 

 besides the remains of the still-living Apterygidtie (A. australis and A. oweni) no 

 signs of any gigantic Apteryx that had been contemporaneous with the Dinornis. And 

 this absence appeared the more remarkable, as we obtained the remains of the gigantic 

 representatives of other birds now living in New Zealand, all of which, with one excep- 

 tion, had become extinct at the close of the Moa age. 



Thus the genus Aptomis, of which there were probably two species, represents our 

 present Ocydromus. Of the last-mentioned species, curiously enough, no remains were 

 ever found either in the undisturbed deposits of Dinomis-bones in caves or peaty beds 

 or in the kitchen-middens of the Moa-hunters. Cnemiornis, a gigantic flightless Goose 

 most nearly allied to Cereopsis (the Cape-Barren Goose of Australia), was apparently of 

 frequent occurrence all over the southern portion of this island ; the remains of 

 Rarpagornis, a huge bird of prey most probably allied to our present Circus 1 , are much 

 scarcer, and the cranium is still a great desideratum. And, lastly, Notomis, belonging 

 to the Grallse and closely allied to Tribonyx, is doubtless on the point of extinction, 

 but is still living on some of the broad mountain-ridges in the south-western portion 

 of this island, where there are numerous tarns amongst the roches moutonnees of that 

 highly glacialized region. 



It was therefore very gratifying to me, during a visit to the Museum of Nelson last 

 March, to observe amongst a number of Moa-bones (which by their colour and state of 

 preservation showed that they had been obtained from limestone caves) a few bones of 

 a dark brown colour that had doubtless been extracted from a turbary deposit. 

 Amongst them were seven bones which apparently belonged to one individual, and at 

 first sight appeared to me to supply the deficiency previously alluded to. And though 

 I had neither a skeleton of Apteryx for comparison nor any work of reference for 

 consultation, so convinced was I that these bones belonged to a gigantic Apteryx, that 



1 Sir R. Owen, judging from the casts of the hones I sent him, is inclined to place Harpagornis with the 

 Falcons or Buzzards. (' Memoirs on the Extinct Wingless Birds of New Zealand,' p. 42.) 



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