COMMON OPOSSUM. 77 
reach, and thus forms a stay to drag himself up with ; having made 
good this step he cuts another for his left foot, and thus proceeds 
until he has ascended to the hole where the opossum is hid, which 
is then compelled by smoke, or by being poked out, to quit its 
hiding place, when the native catching hold of its tail dashes it down 
on the ground, and quietly descends after it. As the opossum gives 
a very severe and painful bite, the natives are careful to lay hold of 
itin such a manner as to run the least possible danger of being 
seized by its teeth. 
Moa (extincr)—Genus Dinornis. 
Owes opinion.—In 1839 Professor Owen announced the con- 
clusions he had come to in reference to a piece of bone sent him from 
New Zealand. ‘The fragment is the shatt of a femur, with both 
extremities broken off; the length of it is 6 inches, and its smallest 
circumference is 54 inches. The exterior surface of the bone is not 
erfectly smooth, but is sculptured with very shallow reticulate 
indentations ; it also presents several intermuscular ridges. The 
texture of the bone, which affords the chief evidence of its ornithic 
character, presents an extremely dense exterior crust, varying from 
one to two lines in thickness. A coarse cancellated structure is con- 
tinued through the whole length of the fragment, and immediately 
bounds the medullary cavity of the bone. There is no bone of 
similar size which presents a cancellous structure, so closely 
resembling that of the present bone as does the femur of the ostrich, 
but this structure is interrupted in the ostrich at the middle of the 
shaft where the parietes of the medullary, or rather air cavity, are 
smooth and unbroken. From this difference Professor Owen con- 
cluded that the struthious bird indicated by the fragment had been 
of a heavier and more sluggish species than the ostrich, its femur 
and probably its whole leg had been shorter and thicker. It was 
only in the ostrich’s femur that he had observed superficial reticulate 
impressions similar to those on the fragment in question. In shape 
the bone approached nearer to the femur of the emu, but it was of a 
larger type. It did not present the characters of a true fossil; it 
was by no means mineralised ; it had probably been on or in the 
round for some time, but it still retained most of its animal matter. 
30 far as u judgment can be formed of a single fragment, it seems 
probable that the extinct bird, if it proves to be extinct, presented 
proportions more nearly resembling those of the dodo than any of 
the existing Struthionidw. So far as his skill in interpreting an 
osseous fragment may be credited, he was 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. His reasons, published at the 
time, proved to be sound in spite of adverse criticism in a work on 
osteology. 
Confirmation.—The first letter received by him from New 
Zealand confirming this announcement and acquainting him with the 
