xviii INTRODUCTION. 
extinct Dinornis , and is followed by notices of the food, footprints, nests, and eggs of the Moas, the 
Maori traditions relating to these gigantic birds, the causes and probable period of their extirpation, 
and a speculation on the conditions influencing the atrophy of the wings in flightless birds to all of 
which the learned author has appended Supplementary Memoirs on the Dodo, Solitaire, and Great 
Auk, with evidences of other extinct birds in Australia and Great Britain. 
THE ANCIENT AVIFAUNA. 
The first Moa-bone of which we have any record was a mere fragment of a femur six inches in 
length, with both extremities broken off, which was brought to England in 1839, and offered for sale 
at the Royal College of Surgeons by an individual who stated that he had obtained it in New Zealand 
from a native who told him that it was the bone of a great Eagle. Professor Owen, on its being first 
submitted to him, assured the owner that “it was a marrow-bone like those brought to table wrapped 
in a napkin”; but on subsequent and more critical examination he arrived at the conviction that it 
had in reality come from a bird, that it was the shaft of a thigh-bone, and that it must have formed 
part of the skeleton of a bird as large as, if not larger than, the full-sized male Ostrich, with this veiy 
striking difference, that whereas the femur of the Ostrich, like that of the Rhea and the Eagle, is 
“pneumatic,” or contains air, the huge bone, of which a fragment was now submitted to him, had 
been filled with marrow like that of a beast. The price asked for this unique specimen was only 
ten guineas, and although Professor Owen strongly recommended its acquisition, the Museum 
Committee declined to purchase the “unpromising fragment.” Much against the advice of his 
scientific contemporaries Owen insisted on publishing his conclusions, announcing boldly— “ So far as 
my skill in interpreting an osseous fragment may be credited, I am willing to risk the reputation for 
it on the statement that there has existed, if there does not now exist, in New Zealand a Struthious 
bird, nearly, if not quite, equal in size to the Ostrich.” 
After the publication of Professor Owen’s paper the bone was purchased by Mr. Bright, M.P. 
for Bristol, and many years subsequently came into the possession of the British Museum, where this 
historic relic is now carefully preserved. 
More than three years elapsed before any confirmatory evidence was received from New Zealand ; 
and then came a letter from the Rev. W. Cotton to Dr. Buckland, followed by another from the 
Rev W. Williams, giving an account of the discovery of large numbers of these fossil remains and 
accompanied by a box of specimens, which triumphantly established the accuracy ot Owen s prevision. 
The specimens transmitted by Mr. Williams were, as a matter of course, confided by Di. Buckland to 
the learned Professor for determination ; and these materials, scanty as they were, enabled him to 
define the generic characters of Dinornis, as afforded by the bones of the hind extremity. An 
examination of a second and richer collection sent home by Mr. Williams, together with three 
additional specimens lent by Dr. (afterwards Sir John) Richardson of Haslar Hospital, enabled him 
to discriminate six distinct species of the genus, ascending respectively from the size of the Great 
Bustard to that of the Dodo, of the Emu, of the Ostrich, and finally attaining a stature far sur- 
passing that of the last-named biped. 
The first of these was a Cursorial bird which, on account of the agreement of its tibia in its 
o-eneral characters with the same bone in the larger species, he referred at that time to the genus 
Dinornis, but which subsequent investigations proved to belong to another genus, characterized by 
