100 
Account of some Fossil Bones 
ignorant of its habits, use, and manner of capture, as 
well as utterly unable to assign any reason why it should 
have thus perished. 
The period of time, then, in which I venture to conceive 
it most probable the Moa existed, was certainly either 
antecedent to, or contemporaneous with, the peopling of 
these islands by the present race of New Zealanders. 
But we will proceed, and endeavour to ascertain (as 
we proposed in the second place to do), to what order 
or family it is likely that the Moa belongs. In making 
this inquiry, we have little to assist us but the bones 
before us, and these, from the writer’s situation in this 
land, without any known osteologic specimens for com¬ 
parison, or any scientific books for reference, and also 
from the bones being so few in variety, will, he fears, 
afford him but little help. 
From an attentive consideration, however, of these 
bones, we are necessarily led to conclude that the animal 
must have been of large size and great strength; and, 
from the shortness of the tarsus (when compared with 
the length of the tibia), we also perceive it to have been 
short-legged. From its size, we shall naturally be led to 
seek for its affinities among either the Raptorial or Raso- 
rial orders; but, from its tarsi possessing only articulations 
for three toes, we are at once precluded from supposing 
that it belonged to the former order : to which we may 
also add, first, the negative evidence, that not a single 
specimen or fragment of a wing-bone has yet been 
found; and, second, the judicious observation of Cuvier 
(in reference to the family of Struthonidce), that 
it would be morally impossible to fit such heavy bodies 
with wings sufficient to enable them to fly. # In the 
* The Baron’s words are: “ It appears as if all the muscular power 
which is at the command of Nature would be insufficient to move such 
immense wings as would be required to support their massive bodies 
