14 The Giant Birds of New Zealand. (January, 
geologist has brought to light the remains of the huge Meg- 
atherium, that exceeded the elephant in size, and other. giant 
edentates, that inhabited the same land in Tertiary times. In 
the same marked manner the marsupials which inhabit Australia 
and Tasmania, to the exclusion of higher forms of life, were pre- 
ceded by animals of the same structure, but greatly exceeding 
in size the kangaroo and the wombat of to-day. The same con- 
nection holds good between the living and extinct carnivores of 
Asia, and with the ruminants of North America. In New Zea- 
(Fie. 1.) APTERYX AND DINORNIS OF NEW ZEALAND.1 
land we find the little wingless kiwi preceded by a host of giants 
‘bearing the same general form, but whose ponderous frames ap- 
proached that of the elephant in their development ; huge wing- 
less birds, many of them being ten or twelve feet in height, and 
far exceeding in size and strength the African ostrich, the largest 
of living birds. These giant bitds, that surpass in strangeness 
the fabulous rocs of Arabian story, were plentiful in New Zea- 
land at no very distant time, and are known to the natives as 
the moa, and have been grouped by science in two genera, Din- 
ornis and Palapteryz. 
1 From Tenney’s Elements of Zoology. 
