MEMOIR 
ON THE CRANIAL CHARACTERS OF 
APTORNIS, 
WITH 
DESCRIPTIONS OF THE SKULL AND BEAK. 
SELDOM has a new idea more rapidly reached its full development than that of the 
former existence of gigantic terrestrial birds in New Zealand, suggested by the frag- 
ment of bone from that island described and figured in the ‘ Transactions of the 
Zoological Society’ for 1839, vol. ili. p. 29. pl. 3. Three years had scarcely elapsed 
when other remains, transmitted from New Zealand, led to the determination of one 
genus of these birds and to the indication of five species, one of the astonishing stature 
of ten feet, by the characters of bones of the trunk and extremities*. In 1846+ a 
second genus of large terrestrial bird, together with four additional species, and two at 
least well-marked varieties, were established, principally by specimens of bones of the 
extremities: different vertebra, ribs, and a sternum, were at the same time contributed 
towards the restoration of the entire skeleton of the extinct gigantic bird, and the 
cranial portions of the skull of two distinct species were described, and compared with 
that of the Dodo, so far as its characters could then be deduced from the dried head at 
Oxford tf. 
No trace, however, of the beak of either of the genera indicated by the bones of the ° 
extremities had then reached England: but in the ‘ Athenzeum’ of September 25th, 1847, 
Dr. Mantell, F.R.S., announced that his son, Mr. Walter Mantell, of Wellington, New 
Zealand, ‘‘in an exploring tour in search of the remains of the colossal Ostrich-like 
* Op. cit. vol. iii. p. 235. pls. 18-30 (1843). + Tom. cit. p. 307. pls. 38-50. 
+ The casts of the cranium of the Dodo, which the authorities of the Museum of Natural History of Copen- 
hagen have liberally transmitted, and the exposition of the bones of the dried head at Oxford which the 
Curator of tbe Ashmolean Museum has caused to be made, permitted the requisite comparisons to be carried 
further in the Memoir read before the Zoological Society of London, January 11, 1848. 
