_The largest known tibia of a Moa, the longest bird-bone known, is in the collection of the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, New Zealand; it is 3 feet 3 inches long. This, however, is exceptional, the measurements of the leg-bones of an ordinary Dinornis maximus being as follows: Femur, 18 inches; tibia, 32 inches; tarsus, 19 inches, a total of 5 feet 9 inches. The egg measures 10-1/2 by 6-1/2 inches._ _There is plenty of literature, and very interesting literature, about the Moas, but, unfortunately, the best of it is not always accessible, being contained in the "New Zealand Journal of Science" and the "Transactions of the New Zealand Institute." The volume of "Transactions" for 1893, being vol. xxvi., contains a very full list of articles relating to the Moas, compiled by Mr. A. Hamilton; it will be found to commence on page 229. There is a good article on Moa in Newton's "Dictionary of Birds," a book that should be in every library._ [Illustration: Fig. 32.--The Three Giants, Phororhacos, Moa, Ostrich.] IX THE ANCESTRY OF THE HORSE "_Said the little Eohippus I am going to be a horse And on my middle finger-nails To run my earthly course._" The American whose ancestors came over in the "Mayflower" has a proper pride in the length of the line of his descent. The Englishman whose genealogical tree sprang up at the time of William the Conqueror has, in its eight centuries of growth, still larger occasion for pluming himself on the antiquity of his family. But the pedigree of even the latter is a thing of yesterday when compared with that of the horse, whose family records, according to Professor Osborn, reach backward for something like 2,000,000 years. And if, as we have been told, "it is a good thing to have ancestors, but sometimes a little hard on the ancestor," in this instance at least the founders of the family have every reason to regard their descendants with undisguised pride. For the horse family started in life in a small way, and the first of the line, the Hyracotherium, was "a little animal no bigger than a fox, and on five[14] toes he scampered over Tertiary rocks," in the age called Eocene, because it was the morning of life for the great group of mammals whose culminating point was man. At that time, western North America was a country of many lakes, for the most part comparatively shallow, around the reedy margins of which moved a host of animals, quite unlike those of to-day, and yet foreshadowing them, the forerunners of the rhinoceros, tapir, and the horse. [14] _Four, to be exact; but we prefer to sacrifice the foot of the Hyracothere rather than to take liberties with one of the feet of Mrs. Stetson's poem._