APTEEYX. 
233 
The egg of the Apteryx, like that of the MegapocUus, is 
large compared with the bird. Professor Owen exhibited 
before the Zoological Society^ one sent to him by the Eev. 
William Cotton, from the north island of New Zea- 
land. Its greatest longitudinal circumference was one foot 
and nine lines ; its transverse circumference w^as ten inches, 
its length being four inches and ten lines. It was of a dull, 
dirty, greyish white ; and it was very thin, not being more 
than one-eighth of an inch thick. Mr. Owen exhibited an 
embryo, in which the feet, with their well- developed claws, 
were well formed ; the beak showed its long shape, its ter- 
minal nostrils, and the slight expansion at the point, which 
forms the end of the crutch in the mature bird. The learned 
professor inferred that the young Apteryx must be excluded 
unusually well developed, with a clothing very like that of 
the parent, and capable of using its beak and limbs for its 
support"^. 
The family containing the Bustaeds {Otidcje) is a 
specially interesting one, from its forming, as it were, a 
link connecting the gallinaceous birds with the grallatorial. 
These birds frequent, by preference, dreary heaths and 
ground not yet inhabited by man. The bustards we have 
* Proceedings of the Zoological Society, January 27, 1852. 
