185 



DINORNITHIDAE. 



MOAS. 



HE first announcement of the former existence of large Struthious birds 



JL in New Zealand was made by Mr. J. S. Polack in 1838. In his book 

 "New Zealand," he states that he found large bird bones near East 

 Cape in the North Island. The first specimen, however, that came into the 

 hands of a scientific man was the bone sent to Professor Owen in 1839 by 

 Mr. Rule, who reported that the natives had told him that it was the bone 

 of a large Eagle which they called "Movie." Professor Owen, with his 

 extraordinary knowledge, at once saw that far from any connection with 

 the Raptores, Mr. Rule's bone was a portion of a femur of a gigantic 

 Struthious bird. He described it on November 12th, 1839, at a meeting 

 of the Zoological Society, and it was figured on Plate 3 of Volume III of 

 the Transactions of the Zoological Society. 



The next notice of the Moas takes the form of a letter, received by 

 Professor Owen from the Rev. W. C. Cotton, dated Waimate, near the Bay 

 of Islands, New Zealand, July 11th, 1842 ; and in it the writer gives an 

 account of his meeting with the Rev. Mr. Wm. Williams, a fellow missionary 

 at East Cape. The latter had collected a lot of "Moa" bones and sent 

 them to a Dr. Buckland. Mr. Williams also reported a conversation with 

 two Englishmen, who declared they had been taken out by a native at night 

 and had seen a Moa alive, but had been too frightened to shoot it. 



On January 24th, 1843, Professor Owen exhibited a number of bones 

 from Mr. Williams' collection, and described them, giving the bird the name 

 of " Megalornis novaezealandiae" afterwards changing the generic title into 

 Dinornis, as Megalornis was preoccupied. Afterwards, when describing these 

 bones and those contained in the second box of Mr. Williams' collection 

 more fully, he somewhat inconsistently changed the specific name to 

 struthioides, which Captain Hutton, in his later classification, retained. 

 Following the laws of priority, however (novaezealandiae has 10 months' 

 priority over struthioides), we must reinstate the name novaezealandiae. 



A number of other finds occurred between 1842 and 1847, but by far 

 the largest and most important collections were made and sent home between 

 1847 and 1852 by the Hon. W. Mantell, who sent to Professor Owen many 

 hundreds of bones and eggshells, from which the Professor was enabled to 

 determine and describe a large number of species, and even as early as 

 this to separate some genera. 



