In the islands of New Zealand have been found the bones of large
extinct wingless Birds, belonging to the Post Tertiary or Recent
system, which have been deposited by the action of rivers. The bird
is named _Moa_ by the natives, and _Dinornis_ by naturalists: some
of the bones have been found in two caves in the North Island, and
have been sold by the natives at an extraordinary price. The caves
occur in limestone rocks, and the bones are found beneath earth and
a soft deposit of carbonate of lime. The largest of the birds is
stated to have stood thirteen or fourteen feet, or twice the height
of the ostrich; and its egg large enough to fill the hat of a man as
a cup. Several statements have appeared of these birds being still
in existence, but there is every reason to believe the Moa to be
altogether extinct.
An extensive collection of remains of these great wingless birds has
been collected in New Zealand by Mr. Walter Mantell, and deposited in
the British Museum. Among these bones Professor Owen has discovered a
species which he regards as the most remarkable of the feathered class
for its prodigious strength and massive proportions, and which he names
_Dinornis elephantopus_, or elephant-footed, of which the Professor
has been able to construct an entire lower limb: the length of the
metatarsal bone is 9¼ inches, the breadth of the lower end being
5-1/3 inches. The extraordinary proportions of the metatarsus of this
wingless bird will, however, be still better understood by comparison
with the same bone in the ostrich, in which the metatarsus is 19 inches
in length, the breadth of its lower end being only 2½ inches. From
the materials accumulated by Mr. Mantell, the entire skeleton of the
_Dinornis elephantopus_ has been reconstructed; and now forms a worthy
companion of the Megatherium and Mastodon in the gallery of fossil
remains in the British Museum. This species of _Dinornis_ appears to
have been restricted to the Middle Island of New Zealand.[36]
Another specimen of the remains of the _Dinornis_ is preserved in the
Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, in Lincoln’s-Inn Fields; and
the means by which the college obtained this valuable acquisition is
thus graphically narrated by Mr. Samuel Warren, F.R.S.:
In the year 1839, Professor Owen was sitting alone in his study,
when a shabbily-dressed man made his appearance, announcing that he
had got a great curiosity, which he had brought from New Zealand,
and wished to dispose of to him. It had the appearance of an old
marrow-bone, about six inches in length, and rather more than
two inches in thickness, _with both extremities broken off_; and
Professor Owen considered that, to whatever animal it might have
belonged, the fragment must have lain in the earth for centuries.
At first he considered this same marrow-bone to have belonged to
an ox, at all events to a quadruped; for the wall or rim of the
bone was six times as thick as the bone of any bird, even of the
ostrich. He compared it with the bones in the skeleton of an ox, a
horse, a camel, a tapir, and every quadruped apparently possessing
a bone of that size and configuration; but it corresponded with
none. On this he very narrowly examined the surface of the bony
rim, and at length became satisfied that this fragment must have
belonged to _a bird_!--to one at least as large as an ostrich, but
of a totally different species; and consequently one never before
heard of, as an ostrich was by far the biggest bird known.
From the difference in the _strength_ of the bone, the ostrich
being unable to fly, so must have been unable this unknown bird;
and so our anatomist came to the conclusion that this old shapeless
bone indicated the former existence in New Zealand of some huge
bird, at least as great as an ostrich, but of a far heavier and
more sluggish kind. Professor Owen was confident of the validity
of his conclusions, but would communicate that confidence to
no one else; and notwithstanding attempts to dissuade him from
committing his views to the public, he printed his deductions
in the _Transactions of the Zoological Society for 1839_, where
fortunately they remain on record as conclusive evidence of the
fact of his having then made this guess, so to speak, in the dark.
He caused the bone, however, to be engraved; and having sent a
hundred copies of the engraving to New Zealand, in the hope of
their being distributed and leading to interesting results, he
patiently waited for three years,--viz. till the year 1842,--when
he received intelligence from Dr. Buckland, at Oxford, that a
great box, just arrived from New Zealand, consigned to himself,
was on its way, unopened, to Professor Owen, who found it filled
with bones, palpably of a bird, one of which bones was three feet
in length, and much more than double the size of any bone in the
ostrich!
And out of the contents of this box the Professor was positively
enabled to articulate almost the entire skeleton of a huge wingless
bird between TEN and ELEVEN feet in height, its bony structure in
strict conformity with the fragment in question; and that skeleton
may at any time be seen at the Museum of the College of Surgeons,
towering over, and nearly twice the height of, the skeleton of
an ostrich; and at its feet lying the old bone from which alone
consummate anatomical science had deduced such an astounding
reality,--the existence of an enormous extinct creature of the bird
kind, in an island where previously no bird had been known to exist
larger than a pheasant or a common fowl!--_Lecture on the Moral and
Intellectual Development of the present Age._[37]
“THE MAESTRICHT SAURIAN FOSSIL” A FRAUD.
In 1795, there was stated to have been discovered in the stone quarries
adjoining Maestricht the remains of the gigantic _Mosœsaurus_ (Saurian
of the Meuse), an aquatic reptile about twenty-five feet long, holding
an intermediate place between the Monitors and Iguanas. It appears
to have had webbed feet, and a tail of such construction as to have
served for a powerful oar, and enabled the animal to stem the waves of
the ocean, of which Cuvier supposed it to have been an inhabitant. It
is thus referred to by Dr. Mantell, in his _Medals of Creation_: “A
specimen, with the jaws and bones of the palate, now in the Museum at
Paris, has long been celebrated; and is still the most precious relic
of this extinct reptile hitherto discovered.” An admirable cast of this
specimen is preserved in the British Museum, in a case near the bones
of the Iguanodon. This is, however, useless, as Cuvier is proved to
have been imposed upon in the matter.
M. Schlegel has reported to the French Academy of Sciences, that
he has ascertained beyond all doubt that the famous fossil saurian
of the quarries of Maestricht, described as a wonderful curiosity
by Cuvier, is nothing more than an impudent fraud. Some bold
impostor, it seems, in order to make money, placed a quantity of
bones in the quarries in such a way as to give them the appearance
of having been recently dug up, and then passed them off as
specimens of antediluvian creation. Being successful in this, he
went the length of arranging a number of bones so as to represent
an entire skeleton; and had thus deceived the learned Cuvier. In
extenuation of Cuvier’s credulity, it is stated that the bones were
so skilfully coloured as to make them look of immense antiquity,
and he was not allowed to touch them lest they should crumble to
pieces. But when M. Schlegel subjected them to rude handling, he
found that they were comparatively modern, and that they were
placed one by the other without that profound knowledge of anatomy
which was to have been expected from the man bold enough to execute
such an audacious fraud.
“THE OLDEST PIECE OF WOOD UPON EARTH.”
The most remarkable vegetable relic which the Lower Old Red Sandstone
has given us is a small fragment of a coniferous tree of the Araucarian
family, which formed one of the chief ornaments of the late Hugh
Miller’s museum, and to which he used to point as the oldest piece
of wood upon earth. He found it in one of the ichthyolite beds of
Cromarty, and thus refers to it in his _Testimony of the Rocks_:
On what perished land of the early paleozoic ages did this
venerably antique tree cast root and flourish, when the extinct
genera Pterichthys and Coccoeteus were enjoying life by millions
in the surrounding seas, long ere the flora or fauna of the coal
measures had begun to be?
The same nodule which enclosed this lignite contained part of
another fossil, the well-marked scales of _Diplacanthus striatus_,
an ichthyolite restricted to the Lower Old Red Sandstone
exclusively. If there be any value in paleontological evidence,
this Cromarty lignite must have been deposited in a sea inhabited
by the Coccoeteus and Diplacanthus. It is demonstrable that, while
yet in a recent state, a Diplacanthus lay down and died beside it;
and the evidence in the case is unequivocally this, that in the
oldest portion of the oldest terrestrial flora yet known there
occurs the fragment of a tree quite as high in the scale as the
stately Norfolk-Island pine or the noble cedar of Lebanon.