238 THE EXTINCT GIGANTIC BIRDS OF 



Taking Mpyornis of Madagascar first, I have figured the perfect egg of 

 Mpyornis maocimus in my own collection. 



This specimen (Plate CXIL), when I purchased it, was one of the very 

 few then discovered, and quite new to England. Reading a paper* upon it 

 before the Zoological Society, November 28, 1867, I pointed out, from the 

 fragments of other eggs kindly presented to me by M. Alfred Grandidier, of 

 Paris, the certainty that another species must have existed ; and I further 

 stated that the new one, which I named M. grandidieri, must have been much 

 smaller than yE. maximus. 



In the lithograph (Plate CXIII. no. 3) the difference of granulation 

 between these two species, and thickness of shell, may be observed, jE. 

 grandidieri being half that of jE. maximus. 



In the interesting article by M. Alphonse Milne-Edwards and M. A. 

 Grandidier, received from them December 22, 1869, I find that they have 

 clearly established three very distinct species — jE. maximus, JE. medius, and 

 JS. modestus, the last by no means a large bird. With which of these, if 

 any, jE. grandidieri corresponds, I am not at present able to state for certain : 

 M. medius looks like it. 



These very competent authors deliver it as their opinion that, " if the 

 Mpyornis was not the tallest among birds, it was evidently the largest and 

 heaviest — the most elephantine ;" and this has always accorded with my view. 



In passing, I may call attention to the enormous thickness of the shell 



teeth set in grooves, and Ichthyornis, a Pigeon, also with teeth in sockets j in addition^ Archaopteryx 

 macrwus, Owen, of the Lithographic limestone at Pappenheim, near Solenhofen, Bavaria (a rock 

 of the Upper Oolite) , with its wonderful tail of twenty vertebrae ; and many another, too numerous 

 to mention here. 



* Cf. my translation of M. Grandidier's paper, " Observations sur le gisement des ceufs de 

 VEpiornis," Ibis, 2nd ser. vol. iv. (1868) p. 65. Also a paper upon the egg oi Mpyornis maximus, 

 by G. D. Rowley (Triibner, 1864). 



