REMARKS ON THE EXTINCT GIGANTIC BIRDS 

 OF MADAGASCAR AND NEW ZEALAND. 



By Mr. G. D. ROWLEY. 



(Plates CXIL to CXV.; 



With much regret I find that the ' Ornithological Miscellany ' has arrived 

 at a conclusion without any papers on Fossil Ornithology — a subject, as I 

 apprehend, yet in its infancy, but one, to my mind, almost exceeding ia 

 interest that of the more recent period, as the facts which it is gradually 

 unfolding are of an astonishing nature. 



In truth, with respect to fossil ornithology, and extinct birds in general, 

 we may repeat the sentiment of Newton's regret before his death, that " the 

 great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before him." Not that I am 

 oblivious of such labours as those contained in M. Milne-Edwards's 

 magnificent ' Oiseaux Fossiles de la France,' or of the exertions of such men 

 as Owen, Haast, Hector, Alfred Newton, and Marsh in America, in this 

 happy field of useful toil ; but the view opened out is so vast that I may 

 justly regard fossil ornithology as hardly begun. With what joy Linnajus, 

 that man of almost faultless character, that saint of science, would have 

 received these things* had he lived in this day. 



* I mean such bii-ds as these : — Odontopteryx, in the Mesozoic strata, with processes not 

 teeth but resembling them ; in Cretaceous strata Hesperornis regalis, a Grebe six feet high, with 



