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The skull of Dinornis maximus differs chiefly in size from that of D. robustus and 
D. ingens. It presents the same type of beak and mouth-bones, the same low broad 
form of cranium. In the smaller species of Dinornis, through the minor difference in 
the size of brain, its case is in them relatively more convex and raised, a character 
which is most marked in the comparatively diminutive Apteryr. As the parts 
furthest from the centre are most subject to modifying influences, the bony framework of 
the beak, of which the palate forms part, departs in Apteryx still further than the 
cranium from the character of the skull in Dinornis. 
The palatal generic characters of Apterya are detailed at p. 29, and illustrated in 
Plate VII. fig. 2. The repeated pressure to which the beak is subject in perforating 
the soil for food being transferred to the hind buttress-bones formed by the tympanics, 
all the beak-bones articulated therewith have coalesced—the maxillaries laterally 
with the malo-squamosal styles, and mesially with the palatines, these carrying on 
the coalescence with the vomer and pterygoids; so that the upper beak, as a single 
bone, articulates with the tympanics by the diverging columns of its quadrifid base, 
the two outer and more slender ones with the outer cups, the two inner and thicker 
ones with the inner cups, the latter being strongly wedged, moreover, before reaching 
those latter cups, between the orbital plates of the tympanic and the pterapophyses 
or ‘transverse processes of the sphenoid.’ The advantage of a certain yielding move- 
ment of the tympanics under extreme pressure cannot fail to be noticed. 
As the dinornithic modifications of the palate are more perfectly demonstrated in the 
skull of a Dinornis crassus, recently transmitted to me, than in that of D. maaimus, 
they will be described in the section on the Restoration of that Species. 
The height of the skeleton of Dinornis maximus, as articulated in an easy standing 
position, in the British Museum, is 11 feet; the length of the trunk (dorsal and sacral 
series of vertebrae) is 4 feet 4 inches; the length of the hind limb, in the same position, 
following the angle of the segments, is 9 feet; the total length of the skeleton, from 
the point of the beak to the end of the tail, following the curves of the spine, is 11 feet 
4 inches. 
DESCRIPTION OF THE PLATE. 
PLATE XOVIL 
Front view of the above skeleton; the individual Professor figured stands 5 feet 11 
inches in height: he holds in one hand the original fragment of bone, and 
points with the other to the corresponding part in the Dinornis maximus. From 
a photograph, 
