MEMOIR 
ON THE 
ORNITHICHNITES, 
OR 
FOOT-PRINTS OF SPECIES OF DINORNIS. 

‘THESE impressions were first noticed in or about the year 1866 by a ferryman on the 
right bank of the Taruhero river, just below high-water mark, at Turanganui, Poverty 
Bay, North Island of New Zealand}. 
The discovery being reported to the Rev. Archdeacon W. L. Williams, he com- 
municated his observations to the Auckland Institute, and presented impressions of the 
foot-prints and casts of the same to the Museum of the Institute. The locality was 
subsequently inspected by the Hon. T. B. Gillies, who has added a record of his 
observations on the locality 2. 
Examples of these ornithichnites have successively reached me through the kindness 
of my friend 'T. W. Cockburn Hood, Esq., and by a donation to the British Museum 
by the Rev. Henry Davies, M.A., who had received the specimens from his brother, 
now resident in Auckland, New Zealand. 
The conditions of the preservation of these foot-prints are those which are not 
uncommon in connexion with the ‘ichnites’ of various extinct animals in Europe and 
America®. A stratum of uniform character, soft enough to receive and hard enough to 
retain the impression, is alternately exposed and submerged through its position on a 
tidal shore between high- and low-water mark. 
During the period that elapses between one spring tide and the next, the highest 
part of the stratum or deposit is exposed long enough to receive many foot-prints. 
During the hours of hot sunshine the so trodden surface may become baked hard and 
dry ; and before the return of the tidal wave, turbid with the comminuted materials 
of a second stratum, has power to break up the preceding one, the impressions may 
1 ¢ Transactions of the New-Zealand Institute,’ 1872, vol. iv. p. 124, pl. 8 (sketch-map). 
* Tom. cit. p. 127. 
* Owen, ‘ Paleontology,’ Svo (2nd ed. 1861), pp. 177-181. 
