animals had resorted to quench their thirst, or screen them at mid-day from the scorching heat. The various tracings become more distinct in proportion to the distance from the scene of common rendezvous, and the several routes by which they would return to their respective haunts, or fields of pasturage, are clearly defined. A considerable doubt hung over the accounts from time to time detailed in the American journals and other publications, concerning these novel and extraordinary discoveries, until they were more than matched by the actual exhumation of the entire skeletons of the feathery tribes, far exceeding in dimensions anything hitherto dreamed of in the science of ornithology. The collections of Mr. Williams, and of Mr. W. Mantell, from the alluvial deposits of New Zealand, utterly confounded all previous calculations as to the size and bulk attainable by the bird tribe. The tibia of a Dinornis, in the collection of the University of Edinburgh, measures thirty-one inches in length, a femur seventeen inches, the average circumference of both being nearly twelve inches. From the foot to the top of the clavicle, the animal must have stood at least thirteen feet in height. With the strut of the turkey, or the pride of the peacock—head and neck of corresponding altitude—what a denizen for the wilds and forests of this region of the new world! When animals of similar dimensions, but of an earlier epoch, frequented the beaches of Great Britain, we have to imagine the Cumbrian mountains, the Penine chain, Derby Peak, and the lofty cliffs of Avon, surrounded by an inland sea stretching by central France, the Black Forest, and the Hartz mountains, and the shores all round silted with the materials which now constitute the triassic group. Tortoises, turtles, bird-headed lizards, birds themselves, salamander and frog-like creatures larger than crocodiles, resorted as now to the sea-shore, in the cool fresh of the evening or as tide-mark permitted, and regaled themselves at will on the food which an ever-bounteous element furnished to their various wants.