GIANT BIRDS.
“To discover order and intelligence in scenes of apparent wildness and confusion is the pleasing task of the geological inquirer.”—Dr. Paris.
Of all the monsters that ever lived on the face of the earth, the giant birds were perhaps the most grotesque. An emu or a cassowary of the present day looks sufficiently strange by the side of ordinary birds; but “running birds” much larger than these flourished not so very long ago in New Zealand and Madagascar, and must at one time have inhabited areas now sunk below the ocean waves.
The history of the discovery of these remarkable and truly gigantic birds in New Zealand, and the famous researches of Professor Owen, by which their structures have been made known, must now engage our attention.
In the year 1839 Professor Owen exhibited, at a meeting of the Zoological Society, part of a thigh-bone, or femur, 6 inches in length, and 51/2 inches in its smallest circumference, with both extremities broken off. This bone of an unknown struthious bird was placed in his hands for examination, by Mr. Rule, with the statement that it was found in New Zealand, where the natives have a tradition that it belonged to a bird now extinct, to which they give the name Moa. Similar bones, it was said, were found buried on the banks of the rivers.
A minute description of this bone was given by the professor, who pointed out the peculiar interest of this discovery on account of the remarkable character of the existing fauna of New Zealand, which still includes one of the most extraordinary birds of the struthious order (“running birds”), viz. the Apteryx, and also because of the close analogy which the event indicated by the present relic offers to the extinction of the Dodo in the island of Mauritius. On the strength of this one fragment he ventured to assert that there once lived in New Zealand a bird as large as the ostrich, and of the same order. This conclusion was more than confirmed by subsequent discoveries, which he anticipated; and, as we shall see, his estimate was a most moderate one, for the extinct bird turned out to be considerably larger than the ostrich.
Later on he received from a friend in New Zealand news of the discovery of more bones. In 1843 a collection of bones of large birds was sent to Dr. Buckland, Dean of Westminster, by the Rev. William Williams, a zealous and successful Church missionary, long resident in New Zealand. On sending off his consignment Mr. Williams wrote a letter, of which we give the greater part below.
“Poverty Bay, New Zealand, February 28, 1842.