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.