Scientific Intelligence — Zoology. 187 



an ostrich-egg, and equal to 148 ordinary hen-eggs. To carry out 

 the comparison still further, one of the eggs of the Madagascar bird 

 would be equal in bulk to 50,000 eggs of the humming-bird. 



The first question to be decided was : Are these the eggs of a 

 bird or of a , reptile ? The structure of the shell, which is strictly 

 analogous to that of the eggs belonging to large birds with rudimen- 

 tary wings, would have sufficed to determine the question ; but it 

 has been completely set at rest by the nature of the bones which 

 were sent with them. One of them is the inferior extremity of the 

 great metatarsal bone of the left side ; the three-jointed apophyses 

 exist, two of them being nearly perfect. Even a person unskilled 

 in comparative anatomy cannot fail to see that these are the remains 

 of a bird. 



M. Saint Hilaire assigns to this bird the generic name of JEpy- 

 ornis, and to the species, Maximus. It cannot be classed with the 

 Omithichnites on the one hand, or with the Ostrich and allied 

 genera on the other, but it is the type of a new genus in the group 

 of the liudipens, or Brevipens. Its height, according to the most 

 careful calculations made by comparative anatomists, must have been 

 about twelve English feet, or about two feet higher than the largest 

 of the extinct birds (Dinornis) of New Zealand. According to the 

 natives of the Sakalamas tribe, of Madagascar, this immense crea- 

 ture, although extremely rare, still exists. In other parts of the 

 island, however, no traces of belief in its present being can be found. 

 But there is a very ancient and universally-received tradition 

 amongst the natives, relative to a bird of colossal size, which used to 

 slay a bull, and feed on the flesh. To this bird they assign the 

 gigantic eggs lately found in their island. That this tradition is 

 wholly a fable, is evident from the character of the bones found, 

 which clearly shew that the bird in question had neither talons, nor 

 wings adapted for flying, but must have fed principally on vegetable 

 substances. 



M. Saint Hilaire considers it very probable that the ^Epyornis 

 has had an existence within the historic period, and that it has even 

 been referred to by two French travellers at different times, viz., by 

 M. Flucourt in 1758, and by another at a later period. These ac- 

 counts have heretofore been regarded as wholly fabulous. It is not, 

 however, improbable that the Eastern story of the. Roe, in the tale 

 of Sinbad the Sailor, may have had its origin in a knowledge of the 

 existence of the bird of Madagascar. It could not, as before ob- 

 served, have possessed any of the ferocious characters ascribed to this 

 fabled bird. A beautiful model of this gigantic egg was presented 

 to the Museum of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh, 

 by the Professors of the Garden of Plants in Paris. 



15. Domestication of Fishes. — In a memoir recently presented 

 to the French Academy, M. Coste remarks, that having had his at- 



