190 
According to Prof. Owen, the birds of South Island present 
stouter proportions , a compact , rather bulky frame of body , such 
as Dinorms robustus, ciephantopus , eras, ms , and Pal apteryx ingens, 
while those of North Island are distinguished by more slender and 
lengthy forms, like the Dinorms gigantevs and gracilis. 
These various species inhabited the plains and valleys and had 
their hiding-places in forests and caves. Their food doubtless con- 
sisted of vegetables, especially fern-roots, which the}’ dug up with 
their powerful feet and claws. To assist the process of digestion, 
they swallowed small pebbles. According to native tradition , Moas 
were decked with gaudy plumage; and the present New Zealanders 
describe a cochin-china fowl as what they conceive to have been 
the shape and the appearance of Moas. The formation of the skull 
leads us to infer, that the} r were stupid, clumsy birds, which we 
must not suppose to have been swift runners like the ostrich, but 
sluggish diggers of the ground, the nature and habits of which 
demanded no larger scope, than such as the limited territory of 
New Zealand presented. 
Most Moa bones still contain 10 to 30 per cent of organic 
(gelatinous) substance, and are not even in the state called semi- 
fossil. 1 Only the bones that had been lying deeper in the loam 
of the caves, are in a half fossil state, similar to the mammoth- 
bones (Elephas primigenmsj found in Europe in post-tertiary depo- 
sits. The almost undecomposed state of the bones, their occurrence 
in the sands of the sea-shore, in swamps, forests, river beds, and 
in limestone caves, together with bones of animals still living in 
New Zealand , 2 all this proves beyond the shadow of a doubt, that 
those birds belong to the recent period of the earth, and that their 
age can only be counted by hundreds, instead of thousands of 
years. From the traditions of the natives it appears, that great 
numbers of Moas were still living upon the islands at the time 
when they were first populated, and that the last of those 
1 Fresh ostrich-bones usually contain y 3 organic and 2 / 3 inorganic substances. 
2 Together with Moa bones in several places were found bones of Apteryx 
Notornis, Nestor, Pinguin and Albatros; likewise dog and seal-bones. 
