474 
Proceedings of Learned Societies. 
Hab. North and north-east coasts of Australia. 
Remark. —A very robust and powerful species. 
June 23, 1846. 
Professor Owen read a Memoir (Part II.) on the Dinornis, de¬ 
scriptive of parts of the skeleton transmitted from New Zealand 
since the reading of Part I. (Proc. Zool. Soc., November, 1843.) 
The bones referable to species defined in that communication 
were first described. Among these were the cranial portion of 
the skull of Dinornis struthoides, and a corresponding portion of 
the skull of Dinornis dromioides, which in general form more re¬ 
sembled that part of the skull of the Dodo than of any existing 
bird; but they are remarkable for the great breadth of a low 
occipital region, which slopes from below upwards and forwards; 
the almost flat parietal region is continued directly forwards into 
the broad sloping frontal region; the temporal fossse are remark¬ 
ably wide and deep; the orbits small; the olfactory chamber 
expanded posteriorly, but not to so great an extent as in the 
Apteryx ; the plane of the foramen magnum is vertical. Many 
other characteristics in the cranial organization of the genus 
Dinornis were described, and the specific distinction of the two 
mutilated crania pointed out. 
The tympanic bone of the Dinornis giganteus was described in 
detail, and compared with the same bone in existing birds. 
Different cervical and dorsal vertebree, referable to the species 
Din. giganteus, ingens, struthoides and crassus, were described. 
These vertebrae were remarkably entire, and with some of the best 
preserved bones of the extremities, described in a subsequent part 
of the memoir, had been obtained from a turbary formation on 
the coast of the Middle Island, near Waikawaite. 
One of the most interesting of the novel acquisitions from this 
locality was an almost entire sternum, referred by Prof. Owen to 
the Din. giganteus. It is a subquadrate, keel-less, shield-shaped, 
bone, broader than long, with the posterior angles and the xiphoid 
process prolonged, as in the Apteryx, but without the anterior 
emargination. The coracoid depressions were small. This bone 
