ON THE EXTINCT ANIMALS OF THE COLONIES OF GREAT BRITAIN. 259 
of that structure ; that it was a “ marrow-hone,” in shape and 
size like those brought to table wrapped in a napkin. 
To further questions as to its locality, the vendor replied by 
showing, among other evidences, a jade-stone weapon, which I 
knew to be peculiar to the New Zealanders; and he still attached 
so much value to the unpromising fragment, that I consented 
to try to make out the bone if he would leave it, and call the 
next day. 
After “lecture,” I took the bone to the skeleton of the 
ox, expecting to verify my first surmise ; but with much re- 
semblance to the shaft of the thigh-bone, there were precluding 
differences; from the arm-bone ( humerus ) of the ox, which 
also affords the tavern delicacy, the discrepancy of shape was 
more marked. Still, led by the thickness of the wall of the 
marrow-cavity, I proceeded to compare the bone with similar 
sized portions of the skeletons of the various large quadrupeds 
which might have been introduced and have left remains in 
New Zealand. 
In the course of these comparisons I noted certain superficial 
impressions which recalled to mind similar ones which I had 
observed on the surface of the bones of some large birds. There- 
upon, I proceeded to the skeleton of the ostrich. The “ bone ” 
tallied in point of size with the shaft of the thigh-bone in that 
bird, but was different in shape. In the latter character 
it was more like the thigh-bone of the cassowary ; but it 
differed in a more important particular from that bone in the 
ostrich, cassowary, emu, rhea, and eagle, inasmuch as in those 
birds the femur is “ pneumatic,” or contains air, whereas the 
huge bird’s bone in question had been filled with marrow, like 
the thigh-bone of a beast. 
I was almost staggered by the conclusion in which I was 
landed. Could a bird as big as an ostrich, and of a more 
massive build, have ever found subsistence in so small an island 
as New Zealand ? All analogy seemed against it. The ostrich 
has the whole continent of Africa for its home, the rhea roams 
over South America, the emu over Australia, the cassowary over 
New Guinea! 
These considerations, indeed, told more strongly with the 
then master-ornithologists, my seniors, Vigors and Yarrell, and 
to whose judgment I looked with due deference. Yet their 
scepticism was more natural from their not being practically 
familiar with the force of palaeontological evidence. And, as I 
urged, this huge bird, if I could be credited, was new to Science, 
and so might as well have come from New Zealand as from 
anywhere else. In short, the “ Paper ” was admitted into the 
“ Transactions ” of the Zoological Society, with one plate, giving 
four views of “ the bone ” in question. 
