Proceedings of the British Association. 133 



by whom they were discovered in a quarry near Turner's Falls. 

 There have also been discovered by Capt. Flinders, on the south coast 

 of New Holland, in King George's Bay, some very large nests mea- 

 suring twenty-six feet in circumference, and thirty-two inches in 

 height ; resembling, in dimensions, some that are described by Capt. 

 Cook, as seen by him on the north-east coast of the same island, 

 about 15° south latitude. It would appear, by some communica- 

 tions made to the editor of the Athenceum, that Prof. Hitchcock of 

 Massachusetts had suggested that these colossal nests belonged 

 to the Moa, or gigantic bird of New Zealand, of which several spe- 

 cies have been determined by Prof. Owen, from bones sent to him 

 from New Zealand, where the race is now extinct, but possibly at the 

 present time inhabiting the warmer climate of New Holland, in which 

 place both Capt. Cook, and recently Capt. Flinders, discovered these 

 large nests. Between the years 1821 and 1823, Mr. James Burton 

 discovered on the west coast or Egyptian side of the Red Sea, 

 opposite the peninsula of Mount Sinai, at a place called Gebel Ezzeit, 

 where for a considerable distance, the margin of the sea is inaccessi- 

 ble from the Desert, three colossal nests within the space of one mile. 

 These nests were not in an equal state of preservation ; but, from one 

 more perfect than the others, he judged them to be about fifteen 

 feet in height, or, as he observed, the height of a camel and its rider. 

 These nests were composed of a mass of heterogeneous materials, 

 piled up in the form of a cone, and sufficiently well put together 

 to insure adequate solidity. The diameter of the cone at its base was 

 estimated as nearly equal to its height, and the apex, which termina- 

 ted in a slight concavity, measured about two feet six inches, or three 

 feet in diameter. The materials of which the great mass was com- 

 posed, were sticks and weeds, fragments of wreck, and the bones 

 of fishes ; but in one was found the thorax of a man, a silver watch 

 made by George Prior, a London watchmaker of the last century, 

 celebrated throughout the East, and in the nest or basin at the apex 

 of the cone, some pieces of woollen cloth and an old shoe. That 

 these nests had been but recently constructed was sufficiently evident 

 from the shoe and watch of the shipwrecked pilgrim, whose tattered 

 clothes and whitened bones were found at no great distance ; but of 

 what genus or species had been the architect and occupant of the struc- 



