Australia you know possesses that animal so unlike all others that when we first see it we are quite astonished—the kangaroo. The bones of a huge fossil kangaroo have been found in Australia which must have stood fourteen or fifteen feet high I should think when on its hind legs, or more than twice as large as any living now.[20] Then there were giant birds in New Zealand (something like the ostrich) called _dinornis_ or “dreadful bird.” These fellows had no wings, and they must have been very much taller than the ostrich or emu. To look at their leg bones you would think they were the bones of oxen instead of birds, they are so immensely thick and strong. I do not think any of these are living now, because they have been sought for carefully, and none of the natives even can say that they have seen one. But their skeletons are common in the surface earth, and their bones, cracked to get the marrow out of them, are often dug out of the heaps of refuse collected about ancient cooking places. So that they were used for food, and perhaps they have not been extinct—that is to say, died out—more than a few hundred years; and this is more likely because feathers are sometimes attached to the remains, and undecayed sinews on the feet. A human skeleton has been found in a grave in New Zealand, too, with the egg of one between its arms, and little piles of pebbles are often seen among their bones, where the stomach would be, which the bird swallowed to digest its food, just as many birds do now. The natives called it the Moa, and they have some traditions about it, and, all things considered, it is probably one of the most recent fossil animals, and that is the reason why I have left it to the last.[21] Now I dare say you will wish to know when the animals living now took the place of those I have described, and which have all passed away. This cannot be told with certainty, but you will see in the “Human Part” that Men were living when the mammoth, mastodon, and some other extinct animals, inhabited the Earth, and that the reindeer, ox, bear, wolf, hyena, &c., have survived to the present day.