Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/360

346 enormous size found abundantly in so many localities, answered generally that the remains were those of a sort of bird known among them as the moa. The Maoris often declared that moas still existed in certain parts of the mountains; several pretended to have seen them, perhaps by way of boasting, for no precise fact occasioned the assertion to be taken as expressing the truth. Still, a vague tradition does seem to have been kept up among the native New-Zealanders with regard to enormous extinct birds.

The dinornis had marked relations with ostriches, and yet more so with cassowaries; in a word, they belonged, at least the greater part of them, to that family of running birds called Struthionids. The comparison of bones, rigorously made by Richard Owen, leaves no doubt on this point. New Zealand was formerly inhabited by numerous species of dinornis, perfectly distinct from each other, and varying much in their proportions. The gigantic dinornis we have mentioned might attain the height of more than eleven feet; other species were of the height of an ostrich, or less, and others had a much more massive shape and a slow gait, as is proved in the elephant-footed dinornis (Emeus elephantopus) by the thick, stout, enormous leg-bones. Each species inhabited a very limited region; the dinornis of North Island and that of Middle Island were not the same, and many of them seem to have lived in a very narrow space. Incapable of flying or swimming, these animals had very sedentary habits. Though it is proved that the great birds of New Zealand must for the most part present close resemblances to the cassowaries, the fact is less certain for some species.

We have observations, descriptions, and even sketches of the birds of the Mascarene Islands, derived from travelers of more or less learning; vague descriptions indeed, sketches often very imperfect, which yet have become precious. They give us at least a general idea of the look, the gait, the colors and habits of the lost animals. We have nothing like this as to the birds of the Austral Islands; some scattered bones, merely, have enabled us to reconstruct skeletons, and to frame comparisons with the nearest species existing in other countries. If the extinct creature differed but slightly in its forms from a well-known living species, the relations are easily established by that single comparison; the differences appear readily to the eye of a practised naturalist, an almost exact notion of the extinct being is gained, a sort of new life seems given to the creature whose mere relics have been seen. On the contrary, if the animal to be reconstructed had very peculiar characteristics, or in its general form proportions unknown elsewhere, it becomes impossible to reach a satisfactory result. We attempt to call the animated being before us in thought, but reflection tells us that the image cannot be a faithful one. This is probably the case with some of the extinct birds of New Zealand.

The question has been asked whether the hope of finding any