Ornithic Fossil Bones from New Zealand. 165 
"Rotomarrama, 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. Br 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 palseontologist 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 
