"This incident might not have been worth mentioning, had it not been for the extraordinary agreement in point of the size of the bird [with my deductions from the bones]. Here are the bones which will satisfy you that such a bird has been in existence; and there is said to be the living bird, the supposed size of which, given by an independent witness, precisely agrees."
The story told of the whaler appears to me to bear marks of truth. The bold essay to explore, the terror inspired by the gigantic figure, especially in the solemnity of night, the description of the manners of the bird running and striding, so like those of the Apteryx, with which its bones shew the Moa to have been closely allied, and the inglorious return of the party without achieving any exploit, are all too natural to permit the thought that no more than inventive power has been at work.
And well may the colossus have inspired fear. The bones sent to London greatly exceed in bulk those of the largest horse. The leg-bone of a tall man is about one foot four inches in length, and the thigh of O'Brien, the Irish giant, whose skeleton, eight feet high, is mounted in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, is not quite two feet. But the leg-bone (tibia) of the Dinornis we know measured as much as two feet ten inches, and we have no reason to suppose, considering the disparity that exists in the specimens examined, that we have seen by any means the largest.
Additional reason for supposing these magnificent birds to have existed not long ago, is found in the fact that specimens of their eggs have been preserved. The circumstances attendant on the discovery and identification of these possess a remarkable interest. In the volcanic sand of New Zealand Mr Walter Mantell found a gigantic egg, which we may reasonably infer to be that of either Dinornis or Palapteryx, of the magnitude of which he gives us a familiar idea by saying that his hat would have been but just large enough to have served as an egg-cup for it. This is the statement of a man of science, and therefore we may assume an approximate degree of precision in the comparison.
I do not know the size of Mr Mantell's hat, but I find that the transverse diameter of my own is six inches or a little more. If we may take this as the shorter diameter of the ovoid, the longer would probably be about eight and a half inches; dimensions considerably greater than those of the Ostrich's egg (which are about six and a quarter in length), but not what we should have expected from a bird from twelve to fourteen feet in height. And this the rather when we consider that the egg of the New Zealand Apteryx, to which these birds manifest a very close affinity, is one of dimensions that are quite surprising in proportion to the bulk of the bird. The Apteryx is about as big as a turkey, standing two feet in height, but its egg measures four inches ten lines by three inches two lines in the respective diameters. The egg of the Dinornis giganteus, to bear the same ratio to the bird as this, would be of the incredible length of two feet and a half, by a breadth of one and three quarters! Possibly this specimen, though indubitably the egg of one of this great family of extinct birds, may after all be that of one of the subordinate species.
But about the same time as Mr Mantell's discovery, one of equal interest was made in Madagascar. The master of a French ship obtained, in 1850, from natives of the island, three eggs, of far greater size, and fragments of the leg-bones of an immense bird. These, on their arrival at Paris, formed the subjects of valuable investigations by M. Isidore Geoffroy St Hilaire[16] and Professor Owen.[17]
The native statement was, that one of the eggs had been found entire in the bed of a torrent, among the debris of a land-slip; that a second egg, with some fragments of bone, was subsequently found in a formation which is stated to be alluvial; a third egg, which the natives had perforated at one end, and used as a vessel, was also found. This last egg was broken in the carriage, the other two arrived in Europe entire.
These two, though nearly alike in size, differed considerably in their relative proportions and shape, the one being shorter and thicker, with more equal ends than the other. The following table shews the dimensions of both compared with those of an ostrich's egg:—