Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/749

Rh FOSSIL FORMS.] BIRDS 731 the same palaeontologist with two more species of Meleagris, another Grus, and an Uria. In Europe, beds of that epoch have not furnished very many ornitholites, while such as are known have been insufficiently studied. A Gallus, how ever, seems to have been found at Paris by M. Gervais, and other portions of the same bird have been recognized from the caves of Aquitaine by M. A. Milne-Edwards. Near Quedlinburg, remains referred to Crows, Sparrows, Swallows, a Bustard, and a Gull, have been recognized, as well as an apparent Vulturine from Magdeburg. Hermann von Meyer has indicated from the valley of the Lahn, Crows, Thrushes, Partridges, and Ducks, as well as a Xumida from Salzbach. A small Owl, tuo, has been found at Kost- ritz. In England, remains of a Swan and a Cormorant have occurred in the diluvial beds of Grays in Essex, and an Owl of middle size in the Norwich Crag, which may, however, be of Pliocene age ; while in France the cele brated gravels of St Acheul have supplied a bone believed by M. A. Milne-Edwards to belong to the Grey Lag-Goose (A user cinereus), to which species, also, an egg found in i brick earth at Fisherton, near Salisbury, has been referred i by Mr Blackmoor, who in the same bed found another I egg, supposed to have been that of Anas boschas (Edinb. N. Phil. Journ. N.S. xix. p. 74). A great number of Birds bones have been discovered in caves, and among them some bearing marks of human workmanship. In France we h:.vo first a large and extinct species of Crane (Grus primigenia,}, but more interesting than that are the very numerous relics of two species, the con comitants even now of the Reindeer, which were abundant in that country at the period when this beast nourished, there, and have followed it in its northward retreat. These are the Snowy Owl (Nyctea scandiaca), and the Willow-Grouse (Lagopus albus). But here it seems unnecessary further to particularize the genera, much less the species, hitherto discovered in the caves of Europe generally, though doubt less they deserve far greater attention than they have yet received. One exception, however, must be made in the case of Cygnus falconeri, a gigantic Swan from the Zebug cavern in Malta (Trans. Zool. Soc. vi. plate 30). The caves of South America yielded to the laborious explora tions of Lund no less than thirty-four species of Birds, of which the greater part are identical with those now existing in the same country ; but some have become extinct, and of these the most notable are a large Craxand a large Rhea. SUBFOSSIL BIRDS. The next ancient Birds bones known to us in the northern hemisphere are probably those of the Danish kitchen-middens. These reveal the existence (very likely, the abundance) of two species, long since banished from the spots where their remains are found the Capercally (Tetrao urogallus), and the Great Auk or Gare-fowl (Alca impennis). Just as the Lagopus albus in the south of France indicates a subarctic or subalpine country with its normal fauna and flora, so does the former of these shew the coexistence with it of pine-forests in Denmark, though on other evidence it is plain that such forests cannot have existed there for many centuries. The latter, of which more must be said hereafter, does not perhaps prove more than that the surrounding seas, though cold, were free from ice in summer time. The Birds bones hitherto recovered from the ruins of the lake-dwellings in Switzerland are all of species which now occur more or less commonly in the same neighbourhoods, and are therefore of comparatively little interest. On the other hand, the Fens of East Anglia have yielded proofs of a form now extinct not only in England, but even in Northern Europe. This is the Pelican, of which two humeri, one from Norfolk and the other most likely from the Isle of Ely, are preserved in the museums of the Uni versity of Cambridge. Whether the species be identical with either of those which now inhabit some parts of Southern Europe is undetermined ; but it was undoubtedly a true Pelecanus, and apparently only differed from P. onocrotalus in its somewhat larger size. At an uncertain but (geologically speaking) recent epoch Mada- in Madagascar, there flourished huge birds of Struthious gascar. affinities. The first positive evidence of their former existence was made known in 1851 by M. Is. Geoffroy St.- Hilaire, who gave the name of jEpyornis maximus to the species which had laid an enormous egg, sent to Paris a short time before ; and the discovery of some bones of corresponding magnitude soon after proved to all but the prejudiced the kinship of the producer of this wonderful specimen, &quot;which not unnaturally recalls the mythical Roc that figures so largely in Arabian tales. Three, if not four, well-marked species of this genus have now been character ized from remains found in the drifted sands of the southern part of that island. Next we must turn to our antipodes. In New Zealand New birds bones of gigantic size seem to have been first heard Zealand of from native report by Mr W. Colenso in 1838, and next year Mr R. Taylor obtained &quot; part of a fossil toe &quot; (Ann. Nat. Hist. xiv. p. 82). In the same year, however, and before news of this discovery was published, Mr Rule placed in Professor Owen s hands the fragment of a bird s femur, which the latter exhibited and described at a meet ing of the Zoological Society, 12th November 1839. Other examples soon came to England, and at a meeting of the same society, 24th January 1843, that learned anatomist applied the name of Dinornis novce-zealandice to the newly-found monster (Proc. Zool. Soc. 1843, p. 8). A few months later he was able to pronounce that he had distinguished the remains of five species of the genus (torn, cit. p. 144); and the memoir subsequently published in the Society s Transactions proved to be the first of a series unrivalled in its kind and fortunately still in progress. Bones innumerable have since been obtained, together with portions of the skin, showing the scales of the tarsus and the feathers of the body, to some of which adhered the tendons and bits of dried muscle, stones from the crop, and eggs, a few of the last containing remains of the embryo. At least eleven good species seem to have been discovered ; and these, according to one of the latest authorities, Dr Haast (Addr. Phil. Inst. Canterb. 5th March 1S74, p. 6), may be grouped in two families Dinornithidce proper, having the back-toe obsolete, and comprising the restricted genus Dinornis (spp. 5) and Mionornis (spp. 2) ; and Palapterygidce, possessing a hallux, and including the genera Palapteryx (spp. 2) and Eitryapteryx (spp. 2). It used to be taken as proved that all these birds flourished within quite recent times, and sanguine naturalists have even hoped that explorations would shew that all of them were not extinct ; but, though there is abundant evidence to prove that they were the contemporaries of man in New Zealand, Dr Haast most strongly urges that the race of man who hunted and fed upon the &quot; Moa&quot; for such name was applied to its bones by the natives lived long before the Maori settlement of the islands. Here there is no room for his arguments (Trans. N. Zeal. List.), and prudence will perhaps suggest a suspension of judgment on this point. In the same formation as those which hold the relics of these wonderful birds have been found, but far more seldom, remains of others not less interesting. First there is Harpagomis, a Bird-of-prey, of stature sufficient to have made the largest Dinornis its quarry. Then we have Cnemiornis, a gigantic Goose possibly related to the genus Cereopsis, with Aptornis and Notornis two Ralline forms,