TO THE PRESENT EDITION. MARCH, 1849.
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GIGANTIC BIRDS OF NEW ZEALAND. — Vol. i., p. 287. An extensive and highly interesting collection of bones, referrible to several species of the 'Moa' (Dinornis of Owen), and to three or four other genera of birds, formed by Mr. Walter Mantell, of Wellington, New Zealand, has recently arrived in England, and is now deposited in the British Museum. This series consists of between 700 and 800 speciments, belonging to different parts of the skeletons of many individuals of various sizes and ages. Some of the largest vertebrae, tibiae, and femora equal in magnitude the most gigantic previously known, while others are not larger than the corresponding bones of the living apteryx. Among these relics are the 'skulls' and 'mandibles' of two genera, the 'Dinornis' and 'Palapteryx'; and of an extinct genus, 'Notornis', allied to the 'Rallidae'; and the mandibles of a species of 'Nestor', a genus of nocturnal owl-like parrots, of which only two living species are known.*
[footnote] *See Professor Owen's Memoir on these fossil remains, in 'Zoological Transactions', 1848.
These osseous remains are in a very different state of preservation from any previously received from New Zealand; they are light and porous, and of a light fawn-color; the most delicate processes are entire, and the articulating surfaces smooth and uninjured; 'fragments of egg-shells', and even the bony rings of the trachea and air tubes, are preserved'.
The bones were dug up by Mr. Walter Mantell from a bed of marly sand, containing magnetic iron, crystals of hornblende and augite, and the detritus of augitic rocks and earthy volcanic tuff. The sand had filled up all the cavities and cancelli, but was in no instance consolidated or aggregated together; it was, therefore, easily removed by a soft brush, and the bones perfectly cleared without injury.
The spot whence these precious relics of the colossal birds that once inhabited the islands of New Zealand were obtained, is a flat tract of land, near the embouchure of a river, named Waingongoro, not far from Wanganui, which has its rise in the volcanic regions of Mount Egmont. The natives affirm that this level tract was one of the places first dwelt upon by their remote ancestors; and this tradition is corroborated by the existence of numerous heaps and pits of ashes and charred bones indicating ancient fires, long burning on the same spot. In these fire-heaps Mr. Mantell found burned bones of 'men, moas', and 'dogs'.
The fragments of egg-shells, imbedded in the ossiferous deposits, had escaped the notice of all previous naturalists. They are, unfortunately, very small portions, the largest being only four inches long, but they afford a chord by which to estimate the size of the original. Mr. Mantell observes that the egg of the Moa must have been so large that a hat would form a good egg-cup for it. These relics evidently belong to two or more species, perhaps genera. In some examples the external p 362 surface is smooth; in others it is marked with short intercepted linear grooves, resembling the eggs of some of the Struthiouidae, but distinct from all known recent types. In this valuable collection only one bone of a mammal has been detected, namely, 'the femur of a dog'.
An interesting memoir on the probable geological position and age of the ornithic bone deposits of New Zealand, by Dr. Mantell, based on the observations of his enterprising son, it published in the Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London (1848). It appears that in many instances the bones are imbedded in sand and clay, which lie beneath a thick deposit of volcanic detritus, and rest on an argillaceous stratum abounding in marine shells. The specimens found in the rivers and streams have been washed out of their banks by the currents which now flow through channels from ten to thirty feet deep, formed in the more ancient alluvial soil. Dr. Mantell concludes that the islands of New Zealand were densely peopled at a period geologically recent, though historically remote, by tribes of gigantic brevi-pennate birds allied to the ostrich tribe, all, or almost all, of species and genera now extinct; and that, subsequently to the formation of the most ancient ornithic deposit, the sea-coast has been elevated from fifty to one hundred feet above its original level; hence the terraces of shingle and loam which now skirt the maritime districts. The existing rivers and mountain torrents flow in deep gulleys which they have eroded in the course of centuries in these pleistocene strata, in like manner as the river courses of Auvergne, in Central France, are excavated in the mammiferous tertiary deposits of that country. The last of the gigantic birds were probably exterminated, like the dodo, by human agency: some small species allied to the apteryx may possibly be met with in the unexplored parts of the middle island.
THE DODO. — A most valuable and highly interesting history of the dodo and its kindred* has recently appeared in which the history, affinities, and osteology of the 'Dodo, Solitaire', and other extinct birds of the islands Mauritius, Rodriguez, and Bourbon are admirably elucidated by H. G. Strickland (of Oxford), and Dr. G. A. Melville.