Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VI.djvu/124

 116 DINORNIS ture and size he concluded that it belonged to a bird of the struthious order, but heavier and more sluggish than the ostrich ; the bone was not mineralized, and retained much of its ani- mal matter, though it had evidently remained in the ground for some time ; this was in 1839. In a second memoir, communicated in 1843, he gives descriptions of portions of the skele- tons of six species of a struthious bird, named by him dinornis, which appeared to have be- come extinct within the historical period in the North island of New Zealand, as the dodo had in Mauritius. These specimens, 4V in number, had been sent to Dr. Buckland by the Rev. Mr. Williams, a missionary, who wrote that they were taken from the banks and bed of fresh-water rivers, buried only slightly in the mud, and probably quite recently; that the birds formerly existed in considerable numbers, and must have attained during a very long life a height of 14 or 16 ft. The bird to which Dinornis giganteus. these bones belonged was called moa by the natives. The names given by Owen were dinornis giganteus, height at least 10 ft. ; D. ingens, 9 ft. ; D. strutMoides, V ft. ; D. dromi- oides, 5 ft. ; D. didiformis, 4 ft. ; and D. otidi- formis, of the size of the great bustard. From these specimens he inferred that the wings were quite rudimentary ; that the large cervical vertebrae supported a powerful beak ; and that its strong legs were used in scratching up the soil to obtain the nutritious roots of the ferns which are so characteristic of those islands. He draws a portrait of this gigantic bird, the highest living form in that part of the globe, with no terrestrial mammal to contest its pos- session of the soil before the arrival of the first Polynesian colony. In a third memoir, read in 1846, an examination of a larger number of ipecimena confirmed the deduction as to the rudimentary condition of the wings by the dis- covery of a keelless sternum ; showed that the species of this essentially terrestrial genus were heavier and more bulky in proportion to their height, more powerful scratchers, and less swift of foot than the ostrich, but in different degrees according to the species ; and indicated an af- finity to the dodo in the shape of the skull, with a lower cerebral development, and consequent- ly greater stupidity. He formed a new genus, palapteryx, of the species ingens and dromioi- des, characterized by a posterior or fourth toe, the three of the dinornis all being anterior toes ; he added the three new species, D. crassw, D. casuarinus, and D. curtus, all of small size. In a fourth paper, read in 1848, he establishes a new genus, aptornis, in which he places what he formerly called D. olidiformis ; this has a large surface for the hind toe, a strong perfo- rated calcaneal process, and a more posterior position of the condyle for the inner toe ; it re- sembles the apteryx in the comparative short- ness of the metatarsus. In this he describes perfect skulls and beaks of these birds, from which he concludes that the dinornis, though resembling the strutMonidw in the extraordina- ry development of the legs and the rudimentary condition of the wings, does not come very close to any existing struthious birds in its adze-like beak, crocodilian cranium, form of the pelvis and proportions of the metatarsus. The gem palapteryx belongs to the struthionida, being ii some respects intermediate between apter and dromaius. The law of the localization animals, so remarkably illustrated in the progress of geology, receives an additiom confirmation by this occurrence in the rii banks of New Zealand of remains of gigant birds allied to the small species (the apteryx) still existing only in the same islands. In vol. iv. of the "Transactions," in 1850, the feet and sternum are described, and two new spe- cies are alluded to, D. rheides and P. robm- tus ; further descriptions of the skull, beak, and legs are given in the same volume. Some years before the discovery of these bones in New Zealand, attention had been drawn to re- markable impressions in the new red sandstone of the Connecticut river valley, in Massachu- setts, which were believed to be footprints of birds, the largest of which must have exceeded the ostrich in size. Geologists were unwilling to admit the existence of birds at this remote epoch, or of such large ones at any time ; but the subsequent discovery of D. giganteus de- monstrated the existence of birds, at a com- paratively recent period, whose tracks would have been 22 in. long and 6 wide, considerably larger than those of the Connecticut valley. The occurrence of these gigantic birds in New Zealand adds much to the evidence that simi- lar upterous and low-organized reptilian birds existed in America during the red sandstone epoch, "the age of reptiles," when the cold- blooded and slow-breathing ompara exhibited such various forms and so great a number of species. Though many of these bones are apparently recent, and though it is not impos- sible, in the opinion of some, that the dinornis,