142 
Christchurch, Canterbury, of some bones which had been recognized to be those of a 
huge bird of prey’, and for which he proposes the generic name of Harpagornis. 
The bones in question, of which drawings accompanied this announcement, were 
a left femur, two ungual phalanges, and a rib. Dr. von Haast carries out com- 
parisons of these remains with the answerable bones of existing Raptores, more 
especially with those of the White-bellied Eagle (Haliaetus leucogaster), the Wedge- 
tailed or Bold Vulture (Uroaetus audav), and the Kahu Harrier (Cireus gouldt, Buller’, 
Cireus assimilis, Gray*), The results of these comparisons, notes of which were 
obligingly transmitted to me along with the drawings, have since appeared in the 
volume quoted below of the ‘ Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute.’ 
In the conclusions arrived at by Von Haast of the nearer affinity of Fuller's great 
extinct raptorial bird to the small Harrier than to the large Bagle and Vulture now 
existing in or occasionally frequenting the Islands of New Zealand I concur; but a 
character will be noted in the course of my descriptions which leads me to place 
Harpagornis, with Falcons and Buzzards, in a subsection of Raptores distinct from 
that including the Harriers. Of the claims of the great extinct Accipiter to generic as 
well as specific distinction, confirmatory evidence will be adduced; but a discovery of 
the skull or beak is still requisite for completing the generic characters and for deter- 
mining the closer affinities of //arpagornis amongst the families of the Accipitres or 
“ Diurnal Raptores” in which the “tibia and tarsus” are not “ to all intents equal in 
length ”*; but in which the tibia is longer, if not “ much longer, than the tarsus ””. 
Pursuing the search for other evidences of his Harpagornis mooret, Yon Haast 
writes, “* following down the swampy water-course from which these few remains of 
Ilarpagornis were previously obtained, a further series of bones was discovered, which, 
on examination, proved to be another portion of the same skeleton described in that 
first Memoir. The bones obtained were scattered over the bottom of the turbary 
deposit along the old water-course, 6 feet to 7 feet below the surface, amongst the 
remains of decaying swampy vegetation. They were mixed up with pieces of drift 
timber, and with a considerable number of Moa bones, several of them belonging to 
the larger species (Dinornis giganteus, var. maximus, and D, robustus)”*, 
" “During the progress of excavations undertaken in the month of March of this year on the Glenmark 
property, Mr. F. Fuller, Taxidermist of the Christchurch Museum, found, amongst a quantity of Moa bones, 
mostly belonging to specimens of Dinornis casuarinus, crassus, and didiformis, five or six feet below the 
surface of the swamp, and over a space of about thirty feet square, a few small bones in an excellent state of 
preservation, which he at once correctly referred to a gigantic raptorial bird.”—(Letter penes me, of Tuly 
1873, since published in the ‘Transactions and Proceedings of the New-Zealand Institute,’ 8yo, vol. iv. p. 192, 
pls. LO & 11.) 
**A History of the Birds of New Zealand,’ by Walter Lawry Buller, 8c.D., F.LS8., &e. &e., 4to part 1, 
pl. 2, p. 11 (March 1872), * § Ornithology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Erebus and Terror p. 2. 
* Rt. Bowdler Sharpe, ‘Catalogue of the Accipitres in the British Museum,’ Svo, 1874, p. 46, 
* Thid. ib. pp. 158 (Buteonine), 225 (Aquiline), 350 (Falconine), 
* Trans, & Proc. N.Z, Institute, vol, vi. p, 62, 

