"Another curious puzzle is, on close inspection, found everywhere in the Moa bone discoveries. It is hardly possible to make sure that the bones of any one complete Moa skeleton all belong to the same individual I heard some one say the other day that it is not certain that any Moa in any earthly museum has all his own bones, and only his own. "A main interest of such a find lies not in the power of supplying museums with specimens of what is rapidly disappearing from the face of the world, but in the possibility of finding species of Moa that have not hitherto been tabulated. Whether any new species have been brought to light on this occasion the experts will not say until there has been time to make a careful study of the bones, nor do they venture on any theory to account for there being so many individual birds dead in that one place, where there appears to be no room for the explanations offered in connection with previous great finds. The date of these birds appears to be earlier than that of the coming of the Maoris into New Zealand, say five or six hundred years ago, as the Maori memory appears to have in it no trace of feasting on these giant Moas, but celebrates the rat-hunt in its ancient heroic song. And your readers may picture their appearance by noticing the fact that one of the recently found bones must have belonged to a Moa fourteen feet high!" Note.--For further information on this interesting subject, the reader is referred to a paper in _Natural Science_, October, 1892, by Mr. F. W. Hutton. In a valuable paper, read before the Royal Geographical Society by Mr. H. O. Forbes, March 13, 1893, the lecturer alluded to the important fact that bone belonging to big extinct struthious birds have been discovered in Patagonia. This is interesting news as bearing upon the theory of a former Antarctic continent connecting Australia and New Zealand with South Africa, and perhaps even with South America. After the lecture, to which we listened with great interest, the subject was discussed by Mr. Slater, Dr. Günther, and Dr. Henry Woodward. For ourselves we can see no great difficulty in accepting the theory that such a continent once existed, though it is out of harmony with the now rather fashionable theory of "the permanence of ocean basins"--a doctrine which seems to have been pressed too far. CHAPTER XVI. THE GREAT IRISH DEER AND STELLER'S SEA-COW.