had seen such a bird, but all agreed that it was the traditional Moho or Takahé, which they had believed was utterly extinct.

This beautiful bird is about two feet high, and much resembles in its general form the Porphyrio melanotus, but it is larger and stouter, and generically distinct: the characters predicated by Professor Owen from the fossil remains, being clearly marked in this recent example.

The beaks are short and strong, and, as well as the legs, were of a bright scarlet in the living animal. The neck and body are of a dark purple colour, the wings and back being shot with green and gold. The wings are short and rounded, and remarkably feeble both in structure and plumage. The tail is scanty, and white beneath. The specific identity of the recent and fossil Notornis is confirmed by Mr. Gould, who has published a coloured figure, the size of the original, in a supplementary number of his splendid work on the "Birds of Australia."

Thus we have at length obtained a recent example of one of the supposed lost types that were coeval with the gigantic bipeds, whose stupendous proportions, and mighty strength, are celebrated in the songs and traditional tales of the New Zealanders, and whose bones, and even eggs, have been transmitted to Europe, and excited the wonder and delight of the natural philosopher and the multitude.

This discovery is of the highest interest alike to the ornithologist and the palæontologist, for this extraordinary form of Rallidae was previously only known by its fossil remains, and would, probably, like the Dodo of the Mauritius (of which the only vestiges are a head and foot), have soon become wholly traditional.

It is possible that another living Moho may be obtained, but the latest communication from my son forbids the sanguine expectation that such will be the case.

FOSSIL PARROT (Nestor).—Table-Case 16.—The islands of the South Pacific are inhabited by a very remarkable genus of nocturnal Parrots (Nestor), of which but two species are known. One of these (N. hypopolius), is restricted to New Zealand; the other (N. productus) to Philip Island, a mere speck of dry land in the vast Southern Ocean, being only five miles in extent; and yet, as the eminent ornithologist

Mr. Gould observes, so exclusively is the latter bird confined to that isolated spot, and so rare, that many persons who have resided in Norfolk Island many years, assured him its occurrence there was totally unknown, although the distance from one island to the other is not more than three or four miles : 1 recent accounts state that this species has now become extinct.

Among the bones discovered by Mr. Walter Mantell at Waingongoro are portions of a skull, and two examples of the bony part of the upper beak of a Parrot, which closely resemble in size and structure those of the genus Nestor.

The beak, by its deep, subcompressed, curved, and pointed form, its seeming solidity, pierced by small subcircular nostrils close to its base, attests the family character of Psittaeida; whilst the proportional length as compared with the depth, the narrow upper surface, where it suddenly expands above the nostrils to join the cranium, the absence of the notch on the under border, the very narrow elongated triangular palatal surface, with the medium linear notch at its base,—all demonstrate that in this characteristic part of the skull, the New Zealand bird represented by it most resembled the living species of Nestor."

FOSSIL APTERYX; ALBATROSS; PENGUIN.-In the last collection received from my son there are fossil bones of two species of Apteryx; those of the largest equal in size the homologous elements in the Ap. Australis; the lesser bones accord with the corresponding parts of the skeleton of Ap. Owenii; but until more perfect examples of crania and other characteristic bones are obtained, the specific identity of the ancient and existing birds cannot be determined. The fact, however, that the living type of tetradactyle struthious birds, known only in New Zealand, was coeval with the stupendous brevipennate Moa, is highly interesting.

Albatross.-Part of a cranium with the upper mandible, not distinguishable from the beak of the yellow-billed Albatross (Diamodea chlororhyncus) of the Pacific Ocean, and portions of other bones, dug up at Waikouaiti, prove that this powerful and rapacious bird of flight inhabited the seas and

1 "Birds of Australia."

2 "Zoological Transactions," vol. iii. p. 371, Pl. LIII., figs. 11, 12, 13.

K

soared over the land, when the Moa and its kindred were the denizens of New Zealand.

Penguin.-The remote antiquity and contemporaneity with the Moa of another indigenous brevipennate genus are established by the discovery of the humerus, ulna, metatarsals, and other bones of Penguins; the partial union, and distinct separation of the shafts of the three primitive ossicles. of the metatarsals, are characters that leave no question as to the generic relations of the birds to which these remains belonged.

FOSSIL SEALS.-A considerable number of vertebræ, ribs, femora, scapulæ, lower jaws with teeth, and fragments of crania, belonging to two species of Seal, were found in the ornithic bone-beds of the North and Middle Island; and the mineralized condition of these fossils-those from Wain

LIGN. 32.

OF A SPECIES OF

CANIS: MOA-BED,

gongoro being filled with menaccanite sand, and those from Waikouaiti with the earthy bituminized materials of the submerged morass,— and their intermixture with the relics of the. Moa, &c., leave no doubt of their contemporaneity with the superficial ossiferous deposits. Whether these remains belong to the same species as now frequent the shores of the Islands of the Pacific (Phoca leptonyx, and P. leonina), I have not had the opportunity of ascertaining.

FOSSIL DOG.-In the most ancient ossiferous deposits at Waingongoro, and at so considerable a depth as to leave no doubt that the animal to which it belonged coexisted with the colossal species of Moa, my son discovered the femur of a Dog (Lign. 32); the only vestige of a terrestrial FOSSIL FEMUR mammalian hitherto observed in these beds. This bone is in the same condition as those of WAINGONGORO. the birds from that locality, and the cancellæ are Posterior view; filled with menaccanite sand. (This interesting and unique relic should be placed in the same cabinet as the cranium with which it was found associated.) Burnt bones of Man, Moa, and Dog.-Table-case 16.The natives directed my son's attention to some mounds covered with herbage and ferns, which they informed him contained bones and ashes, the refuse of feasts held by

nat. size.

their ancestors a long while ago. Upon excavating some of these hillocks, they were found to be made up of ashes and calcined bones of men, dogs, and large moas, indiscriminately mingled.

In Case 15, there are fragments of a human clavicle, radius, and some phalangeal bones; lower jaw, teeth, and other bones of dogs; and some pieces of moa-bones. These relics, which have manifestly been subjected to the action of fire, contained no traces whatever of the earthy powder or ferruginous impregnation, so constant in the fossil bones from the fluviatile deposits; nor of the menaccanite with which all the bones from the sand-beds are more or less permeated.

My son, in proof that the birds' remains as well as those of men and dogs, had been exposed to great heat whilst recent, sent me portions of egg-shells charred and bent inwards.

The Rev. J. Taylor mentions having opened similar heaps of bones and ashes in the valley of the Wanganui, and he describes their appearance "as though the flesh of the birds had been eaten, and the bones thrown indiscriminately together." If such was the origin of these heaps, and they are to be regarded as the rejectamenta of the feasts of the Aborigines, cannibalism must have prevailed among the New Zealanders at a very remote period, and ere the gigantic species of Moas were extinct. The practice was doubtless then, as in modern times, connected with superstitious rites, and did not originate from the want of animal food, as some authors have suggested in extenuation of the horrid practice by so intelligent a race as the Maoris.

RETROSPECTIVE SUMMARY.-From the facts which have been brought under our consideration in the course of this examination of the fossil remains of Birds from our Antipodean Colony, contained in the British Museum, we are led to conclude that at a period geologically recent, but of immense antiquity in relation to the human inhabitants of those islands, New Zealand was densely peopled by tribes of colossal brevipennate birds, belonging to species and genera that have long since become extinct. I believe that ages ere the advent of the Maori tribes, the Moa and its kindred were the chief inhabitants of the country; and that from the period when those islands were taken possession of by

Man, the race gradually diminished, and the colossal types were finally annihilated by human agency.

That some of the gigantic species of Dinornis were contemporary with the Maoris, there can now be no reasonable doubt. Apart from native traditions, and songs and tales in which allusions are made to the magnitude and flowing plumage of the Moa, the collocation of calcined and roasted bones of these birds, with those of dogs, and of the human species, in the ancient fire-heaps of the Aborigines, and the unequivocal marks of the celt or axe of jade on some of the leg-bones, the incisions having evidently been made on the bones when recent,-afford incontrovertible proof that the last of the Moas, like the last of the Dodos, was extirpated by man.

From the great size and strength of the thighs, legs, and feet of the Moa, it is clear that the hinder limbs were powerful locomotive organs; and when we consider the vast swarms of the largest species which at one period must have existed, it seems highly probable that this family of colossal birds, -a family unknown either in a recent or fossil state in any other part of the world,-was not originally confined within the narrow geographical limits of modern New Zealand, but ranged over an extensive continent now submerged, and of which Philip and Norfolk Islands, and Chatham and Auckland Islands, and those of New Zealand, are the culminating points.

But whatever may be the result of future discoveries as to the relative age of the bone-deposits, or the existence or total extinction of any of the colossal species of Moas, or the former geographical distribution of the race over countries now submerged, one most remarkable fact must remain unassailable, namely, the vast preponderance of the class Aves, or Birds, which prevailed, and still prevails in the fauna of New Zealand, to the almost entire exclusion of mammalia and reptiles. Any palæontologist who saw the collections formed by my son alone, must have been astonished at their extent and variety. I may venture to affirm that such an assemblage of the fossil bones of birds was never before seen in Europe; upwards of fifteen hundred specimens, collected from various parts of the country, with scarcely any intermixture of the relics of any other class;