The Wingless Birds of New Zealand . 
239 
From the remarkable fact, that the names of the straight spear in se¬ 
veral of the languages of Europe are either identical, or radically con¬ 
nected, with these characteristic names of the crooked missile, it was 
argued that the boomerang is a more ancient weapon than the spear. 
The author exhibited a tabular digest of the significant synonymes of 
a variety of words, all of them necessarily involving Ihe idea of curva¬ 
ture. These lie arranged according to their palpable resemblances; and 
gave it as his opinion, that the indices or characteristic syllables of the 
classes so resulting, were uniformly identical with the roots of the names 
by which the curved weapon and spear have been 'known. 
Mr. Ferguson stated, that the transit of these names from the one 
class of weapons to the other, appears to have taken place through the 
medium of the amentum, or attached sling, by which the spear was ori¬ 
ginally thrown. He suggested a similar mode of throwing the Austra¬ 
lian instrument, and illustrated it from a British coin of Cunobeline. 
From an investigation of the relations observable among the nations 
which appear to have used weapons of this description, the author con¬ 
cluded that the use of them in Europe was in a great measure peculiar to 
the Gomarite branch of the Japetian family. 
WINGLESS BIRDS OF NEW ZEALAND. 
Professor Owen lately gave a communication to the Royal Institution 
of London, on the Wingless Birds of New Zealand. In the year 1839 
there arrived in this country, from New Zealand, a fragment of the shaft 
of a bone of some unknown animal, supposed to have existed in those 
islands during the historical period. From this single relict, deficient 
in those terminal processes to which the zoologist looks for a clue to 
his reseaches into the probable forms and habits of extinct animals, 
Professor Owen inferred that this bone must have belonged to a struthious 
bird, about the size of a an ostrich, but resembling the extinct Dodo 
of the Mauritius. Since that time, other bones, belonging to birds of 
the same family, but of different species, have reached England, and 
established, beyond all doubt, the justice of Mr. Owen’s inference, made 
four years ago, on such scanty data. The great point of Mr. Owen’s 
present communication, was to explain the process of reasoning which 
led him to this result. Looking into the interior of the piece of bone 
he had to examine, he observed, that its cancellous structure was less 
fine and fibrous than that of any of the long bones of a mammiferous 
animal, — that it was still less like the hones of a reptile, which is ge¬ 
nerally solid throughout,—that with respect to the remaining order of 
the animal kingdom, the birds, the structure of this bone, its density 
and size, proved that, though the bone of a bird, it could not belong 
to any that were organized for flight. Mr. Owen also remarked, that 
although a sufficient supply of various bones of the leg and foot ot 
this bird had subsequently' been received by him, to enable hint to 
characterize several species, there had not appeared any bones of wings. 
Hence, he concluded, that this bird must have resembled—only on a 
gigantic scale—the Apteryx (the wingless bird) of Australia. Mr. 
Owen called attention to a specimen of Apteryx, lent by the Council 
of the Zoological Society. He noticed the long beak of tins bird, re¬ 
sembling the bill of a woodcock, its legs, like those of a fowl, attached 
to a trunk like that of a cassowary; and then appealed against the 
reasoning which disputed the reality of the Dodo’s existence, because 
the same sort of body and legs was found on that bird, united with a 
beak resembling that of a vulture. Mr. Owen stated, that, on visiting 
the Hague, he saw there a picture, painted soon after the Dutch had 
