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VIII. On Dinornis oweni, a new Species of the Dinornithidae, with some Remarks 

 on D. curtus. By Julius von Haast, C.M.G., Ph.D., F.R.S., C.M.Z.S. 



Eeceived April 2nd, 1885, read May 19th, 1885. 



[Plates XXXI., XXXII.] 



oIR RICHARD OWEN in his classical memoirs on the extinct wingless birds of New 

 Zealand describes (on pp. 133, 134) the three principal leg-bones of the smallest species 

 then known as those of Dinornis curtus. These bones had been received by that distin- 

 guished comparative anatomist about 1844-45 from the Rev. W. Cotton, M.A., and 

 were first described in part ii. of the memoirs on Dinornis. Though they were stated 

 to have been collected in the Northern Island, no locality is given. In a further 

 memoir (part xv.) Sir Richard Owen figures two metatarsi of the same species, one 

 being much larger than the other, most probably representing male and female ; but 

 he does not state whence they were derived. Another metatarsus of Dinornis curtus 

 with which I am acquainted was found in the neighbourhood of Wellington by 

 Professor F. W. Hutton, and is now reposing in the Dunedin Museum. Therefore., 

 when examining a large collection of Moa-bones belonging to the Auckland Museum, 

 and entrusted to me for identification and description, I was much gratified to find 

 amongst them, not only a considerable series of bones belonging to Dinornis curtus, to 

 which I shall refer in an Appendix to this paper, but also the bones of a still smaller 

 species, for which I wish to propose the name of Dinornis oweni, in honour of that 

 illustrious biologist, to whom science in New Zealand is so deeply indebted, and whose 

 footsteps — with much diffidence and hesitation — I wish to follow in this communication. 

 Before attempting a description of this peculiarly small and remarkable species, I 

 wish to point out that before the year 1875, when Mr. Thorne, jun., first explored the 

 sandhills and flats north of the Whangarei Harbour 1 , no Dinornis-bones were known 

 to have been found north of Auckland, except a cranium alluded to in the following 

 pages. It was therefore an interesting fact that Moa-bones were found to exist in 

 considerable quantities about forty miles north of that city. Mr. T. F. Cheeseman, 

 F.L.S., the energetic curator of the Auckland Museum, continued the explorations of 

 the grounds previously discovered by Mr. Thorne, and greatly added to our knowledge 

 by also finding in the limestone caves near the Pataua river in the same district 

 numerous bones and portions of some skeletons that did not owe their deposition to the 

 hand of man. Those previously obtained were collected amongst the kitchen-middens 

 1 Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute, vol. viii. pp. 83-94. 



