xliv PROCEEDINGS OF THE GEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
covered in heaps, as if the birds had been eaten and the bones thrown 
indiscriminately together. According to the Rev. Mr. Taylor, the 
bones of the Moa (Dinornis) are found im a bed which is elsewhere 
covered by marine and freshwater deposits. Dr. Mantell remarks 
that the bones obtained from the various localities he enumerates, 
excluding those whence Mr. Walter Mantell procured his specimens, 
were in a state similar to that in which the bones of the Megaceros, 
Elephants, and other animals are found in the superficial accumula- 
tions of England. — 
The bones obtamed by Mr. Walter Mantell presented a different 
aspect, being light and porous, and of a delicate fawn-colour. The 
remains are beautifully preserved, not only egg-shells and mandibles, 
but even also the bony rings of the air-tubes bemg unijured. 
They were entombed in a loose volcanic sand, beneath pebbles and 
rounded portions of igneous rocks. In the sands there were no 
vestiges of molluscs of any kind. Dr. Mantell supposes Waimgon- 
goro, the river near the embouchure of which the bones were 
obtamed, for maps do not contain the name, to have its origin in 
the volcanic regions of Mount Egmont, many parts of which rise 
above the line of perpetual snow. Terraces of loam and gravel, of 
comparatively recent formation, occurring from 50 to 100 feet above 
the sea along the coasts of New Zealand, are considered to prove 
changes in the level of sea and land at no remote period. The 
present rivers of the country are represented as cutting through 
the beds in which the birds’ bones are contained, a fact m accord- 
ance with the supposition that changes of level had been effected 
after the remains of Dinornis and other birds were entombed in the ~ 
mud and silt, peat, or voleanic ashes, as the case might be, since the 
uprise of the land would cause so much increased fall through pre- 
vious level or nearly level districts, that the rivers would attain 
greater velocities over given distances, and consequently greater 
cutting powers into old channels. 
We can scarcely yet consider ourselves possessed of sufficient infor- 
mation to say how deep down among the geologically more recent ac- 
cumulations of New Zealand the bones of the Dinornis and other asso- 
ciated birds may be found. More extended researches will no doubt 
show this: in the mean time the information collected is extremely 
interesting. The birds may have readily perished in various ways, 
including showers of volcanic ashes upon them and their haunts, par- 
tially strewed with their eggs. During a certain lapse of time, ending 
with the introduction of man to these islands, they may have existed 
in great numbers, the gigantic species especially, with their great 
beaks, being too powerful for any other animals then mtermingled 
with them. 
The notice by Mr. Grant Dalton of a large tusk of an elephant 
fished up in the trawl of an Ostend smack, about ten or fifteen miles 
off the island of Texel, affords an additional example to those on our 
own eastern coasts where remains of elephants have been obtained in 
a similar manner. It is interesting to consider, that by the action 
of the waves on the sea-bottom, within depths sufficient to remove 
