223 
MEMOIR 
ON THE 
DINORNIS ELEPHANTOPUS. 
Mr. Watrer Manrst on his return from New Zealand in March 1856, provisionally 
deposited his very extensive collection of remains of Dinornithic and other Birds, there 
obtained, in the British Museum, and I gladly acceded to the wishes of that suc- 
cessful and enterprising collector, to devote the leisure at my command to the exami- 
nation of this interesting and valuable collection. This was shortly after purchased 
by the Trustees of the British Museum, on my recommendation: the entire skeleton 
of the species which forms the subject of the present memoir, and which I propose to 
call Dinornis elephantopus, was thereupon recomposed and articulated, and it is now 
exhibited in the Gallery of Fossil Remains. 
In the arrangement of Mr. Mantell’s collection, I had advanced as far as the deter- 
mination of the bones of the leg, and their classification according to their species, 
when the distinctive characters of one series of these bones irresistibly brought a con- 
viction that they belonged to a species of Dinornis that had not previously come 
under my notice,—a species which, for the massive strength of the limbs, and the 
general proportions of breadth or bulk to height of body, must have been the most 
extraordinary of all the previously restored wingless birds of New Zealand, and un- 
matched, probably, by any known recent or extinct member of the class of Birds. 
On a former occasion, I was so much struck by the form and proportions of the 
metatarsal bone which is referred to the species called Dinornis crassus, described at 
p. 133, and figured in pl, xl. fig. 4, that I alluded to it as ‘‘ representing the pachy- 
dermal type and proportions in the feathered class; and the bone unquestionably 
indicated, at the date of that memoir, “‘ the strongest and most robust of birds.” But 
by the side of the metatarsus of the species which is here described, and for which I 
propose the name of elephantopus, the metatarsus of Dinornis crassus shrinks to moderate 
if not slender dimensions. But the peculiarities of the elephant-footed Dinornis stand 
out still more conspicuously when the bones of its lower limbs are contrasted with 
those of Dinornis giganteus. 
I propose, to commence the present Memoir, with the account of the leg- and foot- 
bones of Dinornis elephantopus, to combine with it a notice of the bones of the lower 
limb of Dinornis crassus which have not previously been described, and to bring out 
the characteristics of both by comparison with the bones of other species, especially 
those of Dinornis robustus. 
