Dromornis australis from New Soutn WaAueEs and Soutr AUSTRALIA, 
A second evidence of a large and, by the texture of the bone, wingless bird, has been 
transmitted to me from South Australia. It was found in a cavern in the ‘Mount 
Gambier range’ of hills in that province. 
It is the lower portion, with the articular end a little mutilated, of a left tibia 
(Plate CXVIII.). It corresponds in size with the same part in Dinornis elephantopus 
(Plate LVI. fig. 4), and is rather larger than that of Gastornis parisiensis!. The 
modifications of the distal end of the tibia, being, as pointed out in the ‘ Paper’ quoted 
below, more salient and characteristic than those of the femur, the present specimen 
is valuable as a test of the conclusions drawn from the subject of Plate C. 
As to the first difference which I note in the Australian fossil tibia, the bone resembles 
that of Gastornis and differs from that of Dinornis, viz. in the medial position of the 
‘precondylar groove ’* (Pl. CXVIII. fig. 1, p). In every species of Dinornis this groove 
is near the inner (tibial) margin of the fore part of the bone (see Plate LVI. fig. 4. 
and Pl. XLIT. fig. 1, p, Dinornis gravis). In both Dinornis and Gastornis the groove is 
crossed by a bridge of bone. Of this bridge there is no trace in the present Australian 
fossil, and there is no evidence of fracture of the piers of such a bridge. The margins 
of the groove whence the bridge springs in Dinornis are, in Dromornis, broadly convex 
and entire. Dromatus and Casuarius * have the precondylar groove, but not the bridge. 
In both the groove is not medial, as in Dromornis, but is nearer the inner border of 
the tibia, less near, however, than in Dinornis. In Struthio there is neither groove nor 
bridge ; but in place of the groove there is a transverse rising of the bone. Apterya 
offers a miniature resemblance to Dinornis in the tibial character of the precondylar 
groove. 
The distal expansion is relatively less, in comparison with the shaft of the tibia, in 
Dromornis than in Dinornis elephantopus (the species which Dromornis most resembles 
in the size of the shaft). The inner border of the distal end of the shaft (Pl. CX VIII. 
fig. 8, a)is broader than in Dinornis, in which it contracts almost to a ridge as it passes 
to the beginning of the posterior production of the inner (tibial) condyle. In Dromornis 
the corresponding part of the shaft, @, maintains a smooth transverse convexity to the 
condyle s. The anterior production of the inner boundary of the rotular part of the 
intercondylar space (ib. fig. 2, 4) is more prominent in Dromornis than in Dinornis. 
The hind part of the inner condyle (ib. fig. 1,s) is less produced than in Dinornis 
and the corresponding part of the outer condyle, ¢, is less convex. There is no 
definite cavity below the precondylar groove for the antentocondylar prominence of 
the metatarse. 
® Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, August 1856, pl. iii. p. 204. 
= Anat. of Vertebrates, 1. p. 78. * Osteol. Catal. Mus, Coll. Surg. 4to, 1853, vol. i, p. 250, 

