204 PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. [Fcb. 20, 



2. On the Affinities of the large extinct Bird (Gastornis 

 PARisiENSis, Hebert), indicated by a Fossil Femur and Tibia 

 discovered in the Lowest Eocene Formation near Paris. 

 By Prof. Owen, F.R.S., F.G.S., &c. 



[Plate III.] 



Perhaps no part of the progress of Palaeontology, since the demise, 

 in 1832, of the founder of that science, has been more striking and 

 unexpected than that which relates to the discovery and restoration 

 of giant members of the feathered Class. 



First indicated by the foot-prints in the New Red Sandstones of 

 the valley of the Connecticut, described by Hitchcock, in 1836* ; 

 next demonstrated by the evidence of the bones themselves from the 

 recent deposits in New Zealand, in 1839t and 1843^; afterwards 

 exemplified by the great eggs and associated fragments of skeleton 

 discovered in alluvial banks of streams in Madagascar, in 1851 § ; the 

 list of extinct giant birds has lastly been recruited by the fossil 

 remains of a species, at least as large as an Ostrich, from the Eocene 

 conglomerate || at Meudon near Paris, which lies between the plastic 

 clay and the surface of the chalky. 



It is this last example of extinct Birds, discovered in the early 

 part of the year 1855, which is the subject of the present com- 

 munication. Associated, as I have been, with the work of recon- 

 structing gigantic species of that class, I received immediate 

 notice of the discovery by M. Gaston Plante and M. Hebert of 

 the fossil bones which indicated the large bird in question, 

 in letters from scientific friends at Paris, and more especially from 

 the accomplished ornithologist. Prince Charles Lucien Bonaparte, 

 then occupied in completing his admirable and celebrated summary 

 of the genera and species of Birds, by a record of all the known 

 fossil kinds. 



On my arrival in Paris on the service of the Jury of the Universal 

 Exhibition of 1855, the specimens themselves, consisting of an almost 

 entire tibia (PL III. figs. \ a k \b) and the shaft of a femur, were 

 brought to the Institut, by MM. Hebert and Lartet, to be shown to 

 me ; and, on my expressing the wish to carry out a series of com- 

 parisons with the answerable bones in other birds, accurate and 

 beautifully prepared coloured casts of the fossils were most liberally 

 and kindly made and presented to me before my return to London, 

 with the desire that I would endeavour to arrive at some definite 

 conclusion as to the nature and affinities of the bird to which the 

 fossils belonged. In the meanwhile the opinions of M. Hebert, 



* In the American Journal of Science and Arts, January 1836, vol. xxix. 



t Zoological Transactions, vol. iii. p. 29. % lb. vol. iii, p. 235. 



§ Isidore Geoffroy St. Hilaire, in Comptes Rendus de TAcademie des Sciences, 

 Paris, January 27, 1851. 



II Particularly described by D'Orbigny, in the Bulletin de la Societe Geologique 

 de France, lere serie, vol. vii. p. 280. 



^ The uppermost cretaceous stratum called calcaire pisolithique. 



