Ornithic Fossil Bones from New Zealand. 165 



'Rotomarrania, at the bottom of a hill. The entrance is twenty- 

 five feet high and eighteen feet broad, and its mouth is con- 

 cealed with shrubs. The cave is about a mile in length, run- 

 ning under the hill, and the bones are found in all parts ; some 

 under soft sand and limestone, others covered with a crust of 

 limestone only. Glowworms were seen in the cave, but no 

 plants. This is called the Cave of the Spirit. It is held in 

 great terror by the natives, and some now alive say they have 

 seen a living moa, that it lived in the cave, and used to stand 

 on one foot, so that it is just possible that the moa may still 

 be alive in some of the wildest and most secluded parts of the 

 island. Dr Thomson gave some bones to Governor Gray 

 several years ago, and is not quite sure that the governor did 

 not give them to Professor Owen. There is another limestone 

 cave, called the Cave of the Moa : this is of less extent than 

 the former, and is about seventeen miles from Honipaka. 

 The animals resorted to the caves to die. The natives used the 

 larger bones to make fish-hooks, the skulls to hold their tatoo- 

 ing powder, and for other purposes ; thus, few of the leg-bones 

 or skulls can now be got." 



In November 1839, Professor Owen read a communication 

 before the Zoological Society of London, in which he described 

 a portion of the shaft of a femur, six inches in length, and five 

 and a half inches in circumference, which had been brought 

 from New Zealand. After a careful and critical examination, 

 that distinguished palaeontologist pronounced the fragment of 

 bone to belong to a large bird, allied to the ostrich ; and 

 staked his anatomical reputation, that species of birds heavier 

 and more sluggish than the ostrich would be discovered to 

 have existed in New Zealand. In less than four years after- 

 wards, this inference was happily confirmed from numerous 

 bones transmitted to this country, which were found in the 

 bed and banks of fresh water rivers at Poverty Bay, buried 

 only at a little depth in the mud. From these fragments of 

 bone, Professor Owen was enabled to establish three genera of 

 extinct birds, which he named Dinornis, Palapteryx, and Ap- 

 tornis. 



In 1847, the late Dr Gideon Mantell received from his son, 

 Mr Walter Mantell, no less than eight hundred specimens of 

 vol. ii. y 



