Professor Sir Richard Owen aptly remarks “ The Jptenjx presents such a singular and 
seemingly anomalous compound of characters belonging to different orders of Birds as may well make 
the naturalist pause before he ventures to pronounce against the possibility of a like combination of 
peculiarities in the historical Dodo. It seems, as it were, to have borrowed its head from the Longi- 
rostral Grallce, its legs from the Gallinw, and its wings from the struthious order. It is clothed with 
a plumage having the characteristic looseness of that of the terrestrial birds depiived of the powei of 
flight ; its feathers resemble those of the Emu in the general uniformity of their size, structure, and 
colour, hut they are more simple than in any of the tridactyle Struthionidce, as they want the acces- 
sory plumelet When the trunk is stripped of its plumage, the body of the Apteryx presents the 
form of an elongated cone gradually tapering forwards, from the broad base formed by the haunches 
to the extremity of the attenuated beak. The wings appear as two small crooked appendages project- 
ing about an inch and a half from the sides of the thorax, and terminated by a curved, obtuse, horny 
claw 3 lines long : the antibracMum is retained in a state of permanent flexion by the surrounding 
integument of the wing ; and it cannot be brought by forcible extension beyond an angle of 45° wRh 
the humerus. Nine quasi-quill-plumes, not exceeding in length the ordinary body-feathers, but with 
somewhat thicker shafts, are arranged in a linear series along the ulnar margin of the antibracMum , 
the terminal ones are the largest, and in one specimen they presented a structure differing from that 
of the ordinary plumes, consisting of a shaft from which radiated a series of flattened horny filaments 
of nearly equal length.” (Prof. Owen’s ‘ Memoir on Apteryx australis^ Trans. Z. S. ii. p. 267.) 
Professor Hutton, in his valuable essay on the “ Geographical Relations of the New Zealand 
Fauna” (Trans. N.-Z. Inst. vol. vi. p. 232), says “ The Apterygidw have a more generalized struc ture 
than the other struthious birds ; they, therefore, belong to an older type, and cannot, with any degree 
of correctness, be said to represent the extinct race of Moas.” And, again, in his review of my ‘ Birds 
of New Zealand’ (first edition) in the ‘ New-Zea land Magazine,’ p. 99, Professor Hutton says:— “ We 
must take exception to the Kiwi being considered as the living representative of the Moa, or, as 
Dr. Buller puts it in his preface, ‘ the only living representative of an extinct race. No doubt the 
Kiwi and the Moa have several features in common ; but it is certain that both the Emu and the 
Cassowary are far more nearly related to the Moa than is the Kiwi.” Professor Mivart has since read 
a paper before the Zoological Society of London on the axial skeleton of the Struthionidee, Avhich 
effectually settles the question at issue. He pointed out that, judging by the characters of the axial 
skeleton, the Emu presents the least differential type, from which Ehea diverges most on the one 
hand, and Apteryx on the other; that the resemblance between Bromoeus and Casuarinus is exceed- 
ingly close, while the axial skeleton of Binornis is intermediate between that of Casuarinus and 
Apteryx ; its affinities, however, with the existing New-Zcaland form very decidedly predominating. 
Still later. Professor Newton (in his article “ Ornithology ” in the ‘ Encyclox^sedia Britannica ’) 
thus referred to the subject “ Some systematists think there can be little question of the Struthi- 
ojies being the most specialized and therefore probably the highest type of these Oideis, and the 
present writer is rather inclined to agree with them. Nevertheless the formation of the bill in the 
Apteryges is quite irnique in the whole Class, and indicates therefore an extiaoidinaiy amount of 
specialization. Their functionless wings, however, point to their being a degraded form, though in 
this matter they are not much worse than the Megistanes, and are far above the Immanes some of 
which at least appear to have been absolutely wingless, and were thus the only members of the Class 
possessing but a single pair of limbs.” 
It will be seen, therefore, that I was fully justified in referring to the existing species of Apteryx 
as “ the diminutKe representatives of colossal ornithic types that have disappeared. 
An able paper communicated by Professor Huxley to the Zoological Society on June 2, 1882, 
contains some interesting information on the respiratory organs of Apteryx, from which I extract the 
