MEMOIR 
ON THE 
MODIFICATIONS OF THE STERNUM 
IN THE 
GENUS DINORNIS. 

IN November 1867 I was favoured by a note from Henry Sumprer, Esq., requesting 
me to inspect a collection of bones which he had received from a correspondent at 
Christchurch, Canterbury Settlement, in the South (or Middle) Island of New Zealand. 
It appeared that the bones had been obtained from the extensive swamp or bog at 
Glenmark, about forty miles from Christchurch ; they consisted of a considerable pro- 
portion of the skeleton of the Dinornis elephantopus, of a less complete series of the 
bones of D. rhetdes, including bones of the foot, corresponding with those figured in 
Pl. L. fig. 1. There were also afew bones of D. crassus. In this collection I saw, for the 
first time, specimens of sterna, entire, of these large wingless birds of New Zealand. 
Sternum of Dinornis elephantopus, Ow. 
The collection of bones of Dinornis elephantopus includes a sternum (Pl LXXII.), 
wanting only the margin of the anterior border with the costal processes: the costal 
tracts (d, ¢, c, fig. 2, m,n, 0) are nearly entire; and a great part of the lateral processes 
(fig. 1, 2 h) are preserved, showing that these diverged from the sternal body at a more 
open angle than was given in the restoration of the bone from the fragments accom- 
panying the skeleton figured in Pl. LXI., such restoration being guided by the analogy 
of the more perfect sternums referable to the genus Dinornis (P1. XXXYV.) or Pala- 
pteryx (Pl. XLVITI.). 
In the transverse extent and straightness of the anterior border (fig. 1,56), the small 
and feebly marked coracoid depressions limited to the outer angles of that border (dd), 
and in the pair of wide and deep posterior vacuities (ff), this sternum exhibits the 
general Dinornithie modifications of the type of the bone presented by the Apteryx 
(Pl. IX.), and noted at p. 197. 

