206 
The circumstances under which this at present unique specimen came into my hands 
are as follows :— 
In March 1850 I was favoured by a letter from His Excellency Sir George Grey, 
Governor-in-Chief of New Zealand, dated Auckland, November 29th, 1849, informing 
me that he had been “able to procure a number of bones of birds, which were found 
in a cave in the district which lies between the River Waikate and Mount Tongariro: ” 
and intimating his liberal intention of transmitting them to me. They arrived soon 
after: and in this collection, which included remains of various species of Dinornis and 
Palapteryx, and the cranium of a Notornis, | had the extreme pleasure to find, with 
several smaller crania, the remarkably fine specimen, with the bone of the upper man- 
dible, which forms the subject of Pl. LI. ‘The following are some of the dimensions 
of this cranium :— 
Pal. ingens (?), Struthio. 

inches. lines. inches, lines. 
Breadth of the cranium across the mastoids (s, 8) . . 3 8 3 0 
Length of the cranium to the anterior border of the ae 
frontals (11). : 
Breadth across the postorbital angles . 
Breadth across the temporal fossa 
Vertical diameter from supraoccipital ridge to basisplenoid. . 
Transverse diameter of occipital foramen ., pews 
Breadth across the paroccipitals (4, 4) 
Total length of skull, in a straight line . . 
Total length of premaxillary 7G pee eas 
Breadth of the middle of the upper beak ..... 
From the anterior border of the intereommunicating aperture | 
between the nostrils to the end of the premaxillary 
From the fore-part of the bony palatal opening of the nostrils 
to the end of the premaxillary \ 
Length of the olfactory fosse in the frontal bone , . 
Breadth of the same fosse .............0..... 
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The occipital region corresponds very closely with that of the cranium referred to 
Dinornis struthiotdes (Pl. XVI.) and with that conjectured to show the characters of 
Palapteryx geranoides (P|. XLV.), repeating the distinctive characters pointed out at 
p. 116, by which the large wingless birds of New Zealand differ from the Ostrich, 
Emeu, Cassowary, and Rhea of the existing class. 
The pedunculate occipital condyle (Pl. LI. fig. 1,1), the descending basioccipital, 
the square basisphenoidal platform with its two posterior tuberous angles (ib. fig. 2, 1”), 
the extremely broad, low superoccipital region (ib. fig. 1,3), with its inclination from 
below upwards and forwards, and its subdivision into four depressions, are all well- 
marked characters in the present skull. ‘The border of the vertical occipital foramen 
is rounded off, not sharply defined or grooved, as in the crania above-cited. The outer 
superoccipital depression is separated from the temporal fossa by a smooth non-mus- 
cular tract above the mastoid, of four lines in breadth, as in the cranium figured in 
Pl. XVI. The temporal fosse are separated from each other by a similar tract 
. 


