347 
MEMOTR 
ON THE 
DINORNIS GRAVIS. 
"THE bones described and figured in the present Memoir were discovered in the bed of 
the Kakamai river, South Island, New Zealand, by William Fenwick, Esq. I am 
indebted to the kindness of the Baroness Burdett Coutts for the loan of the specimens. 
The seventeen species of terrestrial birds, incapable of flight, defined in previous 
Memoirs of this work were, for the most part, originally characterized by bones of the 
hind limbs. They have, however, received subsequent confirmation, either by the dis- 
covery of other parts of the skeleton, or by the repetition of the characters in additional 
specimens of femur, tibia, and metatarsus, or by both classes of evidence. 
Of Dinornis casuarinus, for example, in the year 1846, I had had under inspection 
ten femora, eleven tibie, and six metatarsi. At a later period I was able to add the 
cranial characters to seven of the species of Dinornis and to two of the species of 
Aptornis, originally indicated by leg-bones', and at the same time to propose a distinct 
species of Dinornis, as represented by the skull’, of which species the characters of the 
leg-bones are now given. Dr. Hector has vindicated the generic distinction of Cnemiornis, 
and shown it to be a flightless water-fowl. 
I have much confidence, therefore, that the remains of the singular wingless birds of 
New Zcalatd described and figured in this work as the types of such extinct species 
will be matched and recognized in the way and degree in which many of them have 
been confirmed by the able naturalist Dr. Haast, F.R.S., Government Geologist of the 
Province of Canterbury, in the instructive paper quoted in a subsequent part of the 
present Memoir. 
The term gravis, applied to the species which is its subject, referred to the weight of 
the bird, as indicated by the proportions of a bone of the hind limbs; and its appro 
priateness will be, perhaps, admitted, on due consideration of the characters of the 
pelvis, femora, tibia, and metatarsi about to be described. 
1 The tibia, e.g. (p. 85, Pl. XXVIL fig. 5), of Dinornis (afterwards Aptornis) otidiforms. 
* Ante, p. 280, Pl. LXXXYV, 
3t 
