Birds. 2729 



than this, — ' the curlew which is connected by affinity to its race,' or 

 more plainly perhaps, ' the curlew which by blood is a relation of 

 curlews.' But surely this is a most unphilosophical as well as a very 

 strange designation ; inasmuch as it is the veriest truism which could 

 be thought of, to say that every species of curlew is individually con- 

 nected, by affinity of race, with all the other species, however many, 

 of which the genus Numenius is made up.* 



If the doctrine is regarded as sound, that the name even of a species 

 should not involve a reference to another species, it will, in all proba- 

 bility, be conceded that a similar doctrine is applicable to the names 

 of genera in a still more emphatic and powerful degree. It is, indeed, 

 as we have already seen, against generic names ending in oides that 

 the unqualified and summary denunciation of Linneus is pronounced. 

 He will not give them so much as a hearing. The first name of this 

 description which calls for notice, in the Reports in question, is per- 

 haps Polyboroides typicus (p. 61) : and, if the meaning of this name 

 is to be given in English, it must be by some such paraphrase as this, 

 — ' the type of those birds which have a resemblance to the bird 

 the excessive glutton.' It would seem to be thus implied, that these 

 birds have in themselves no appearances sufficiently distinctive to 

 form a genus, and that they must be referred to a genus already in ex- 

 istence, while, at the same time, they do not harmonize with that genus 



* In arranging the various species, so far as they have yet been discovered, of the 

 gigantic genus of New Zealand birds which has been named Dinornis, Professor 

 Owen (p. 295) has instituted Dinornis Struthioides, Dromaeoides and Didifonnis, or 

 the awful bird resembling the ostrich, that resembling the emeu, and that of the form 

 of the dodo. And if, in any case, a specific name ending in oides is admissable in 

 the nomenclature of science, it would appear to be so in perhaps a case like the pre- 

 sent, where there is too much reason to fear that — however lately in existence — the 

 Dinornis is now finally extinct. And, since we cannot any longer look upon these 

 feathered Goliaths themselves, it undoubtedly assists us in picturing their appearance 

 to our imagination, when we are told that two of the species resembled respectively 

 the ostrich and the emeu. It may, however, admit of a doubt, whether the specific 

 name Didifonnis is equally unobjectionable with those just mentioned along with it, 

 inasmuch as it refers us to a form which has itself become extinct, and of which 

 there is, in all probability, but one portrait only in existence which was actually taken 

 from the life, and that too by an artist of celebrity ; and which may, therefore, be 

 looked upon as accurate in every respect : this portrait was for a time lost sight of, 

 id was again brought to light by Professor Owen himself, at the Hague, in 1838 

 (Penny Cyclopaedia, xxiii. 143). The researches and discoveries of Professor Owen 

 in regard to the bones of the extinct Dinornis, and to many other subjects of a kin- 

 dred nature, show that upon him has fallen the mantle of Cuvier : of that great 

 comparative anatomist he would indeed appear to be the worthy successor. 



