Page:Picturesque New Zealand, 1913.djvu/406

272 Why, too, has New Zealand none of the animals of South America or of South Africa, if, as extinct land insects, worms, and shells indicate, it was a part of these continents? No man knows. New Zealand has been especially favored with flightless birds. Now these are comparatively rare, but hundreds of years ago they were plentiful. The greatest of these was the ostrich-like moa (Dinornithidæ), evidently the largest creature that ever existed in New Zealand. The moa was absolutely wingless, it apparently was slow and stupid, and some of the eighteen known species were ridiculously squatty. Of the squatty sort was the Dinornis elphantopus which, though the heaviest built, was only half as tall as some other species. The moa's height was from two to eleven feet; the tallest had a leg five and one half feet long. The neck was very long; some of the bones of the largest birds were five or six inches in maximum diameter at the joints; the largest eggs had a lengthwise diameter of nearly a foot; and gizzard stones were from one fourth of an inch to an inch thick. From head to legs—in some species to toes—the bird was covered with short, soft feathers similar to the feathers of the emu and the cassowary, and there are indications that some moas had a tuft of feathers on the head. The moa existed at least as far back as the Pliocene age. In the Pleistocene period a very large percentage of moas died, possibly as a result of the long, cold winters common to that age; and in large quantities their bones