Animals of the Past Part 5

Now collecting is a lottery, differing from most lotteries, however, in that while some of the returns may be pretty small, there are few absolute blanks and some remarkably large prizes, and every collector hopes that it may fall to his lot to win one of these, and is willing to work long and arduously for the chance of obtaining it.

It may give some idea of the chances to say that some years ago Dr.

Wortman spent almost an entire season in the field without success, and then, at the eleventh hour, found the now famous skeleton of Phenacodus, or that a party from Princeton actually camped within 100 yards of a rich deposit of rare fossils and yet failed to discover it.

Let us, however, suppose that the reconnaissance has been successful, and that an outcrop of bone has been found, serving like a tombstone carven with strange characters to indicate the burial-place of some primeval monster. Possibly Nature long ago rifled the grave, was.h.i.+ng away much of the skeleton, and leaving little save the fragments visible on the surface; on the other hand, these pieces may form part of a complete skeleton, and there is no way to decide this important question save by actual excavation. The manner of disinterment varies, but much depends on whether the fossil lies in comparatively loose shale or is imbedded in the solid rock, whether the strata are level or dip downward into the hillside. If, unfortunately, this last is the case, it necessitates a careful shoring up of the excavation with props of cotton-wood or such boards as may have been brought along to box specimens, or it may even be necessary to run a short tunnel in order to get at some coveted bone. Should the specimen lie in shale, as is the case with most of the large reptiles that have been collected, much of that work may be done with pick and shovel; but if it is desirable or necessary to work in firm rock, drills and hammers, wedges, even powder, may be needed to rend from Nature her long-kept secrets. In any event, a detailed plan is made of the excavation, and each piece of bone or section of rock duly recorded therein by letter and number, so that later on the relation of the parts to one another may be known, or the various sections a.s.sembled in the work-room exactly as they lay in the quarry. Bones which lie in loose rock are often, one might say usually, more or less broken, and when a bone three, four, or even six feet long, weighing anywhere from 100 to 1,000 pounds, has been shattered to fragments the problem of removing it is no easy one. But here the skill of the collector comes into play to treat the fossil as a surgeon treats a fractured limb, to cover it with plaster bandages, and brace it with splints of wood or iron so that the specimen may not only be taken from the ground but endure in safety the coming journey of a thousand or more miles. For simpler cases or lighter objects strips of sacking, or even paper, applied with flour and water, suffice, or pieces of sacking soaked in thin plaster may be laid over the bone, first covering it with thin paper in order that the plaster jacket may simply stiffen and not adhere to it. Collecting has not always been carried on in this systematic manner, for the development of the present methods has been the result of years of experience; formerly there was a mere skimming-over of the surface in what Professor Marsh used to term the potato-gathering style, but now the effort is made to remove specimens intact, often imbedded in large ma.s.ses of rock, in order that all parts may be preserved.

We will take it for granted that our specimens have safely pa.s.sed through all perils by land and water, road and rail; that they have been quarried, boxed, carted over a roadless country to the nearest railway, and have withstood 2,000 miles of jolting in a freight-car. The first step in reconstruction has been taken; the problem, now that the boxes are reposing on the work-room floor, is to make the blocks of stone give up the secrets they have guarded for ages, to free the bones from their enveloping matrix in order that they may tell us something of the life of the past. The method of doing this varies with the conditions under which the material has been gathered, and if from hard clay, chalk, or shale, the process, though tedious enough at best, is by no means so difficult as if the specimens are imbedded in solid rock. In this case the fragments from a given section of quarry must be a.s.sembled according to the plan which has been carefully made as the work of exhumation progressed, all pieces containing bone must be stuck together, and weak parts strengthened with gum or glue. Now the ma.s.s is attacked with hammer and chisel, and the surrounding matrix slowly and carefully cut away until the contained bone is revealed, a process much simpler and more expeditious in the telling than in the actuality; for the preparator may not use the heavy tools of the ordinary stone-cutter: sometimes an awl, or even a glover's needle, must suffice him, and the chips cut off are so small and such care must be taken not to injure the bone that the work is really tedious. This may, perhaps, be better appreciated by saying that to clean a single vertebra of such a huge Dinosaur as Diplodocus may require a month of continuous labor, and that a score of these big and complicated bones, besides others of simpler structure, are included in the backbone. The finished specimen weighs over 120 pounds, while as originally collected, with all the adherent rock, the weight was twice or thrice as great. Such a ma.s.s as this is comparatively small, and sometimes huge blocks are taken containing entire skulls or a number of bones, and not infrequently weighing a ton. The largest single specimen is a skull of Triceratops, collected by Mr. J. B. Hatcher, which weighed, when boxed, 3,650 pounds.

Or, as the result of some mishap, or through the work of an inexperienced collector, a valuable specimen may arrive in the shape of a box full of irregular fragments of stone compared with which a dissected map or an old-fas.h.i.+oned Chinese puzzle is simplicity itself, and one may spend hours looking for some piece whose proper location gives the clew to an entire section, and days, even, may be consumed before the task is completed. While this not only tries the patience, but the eyes as well, there is, nevertheless, a fascination about this work of fas.h.i.+oning a bone out of scores, possibly hundreds, of fragments, and watching the irregular bits of stone shaping themselves into a mosaic that forms a portion of some creature, possibly quite new to science, and destined to bear a name as long as itself. And thus, after many days of toil, the bone that millions of years before sank into the mud of some old lake-bottom or was buried in the sandy shoals of an ancient river, is brought to light once more to help tell the tale of the creatures of the past.

One bone might convey a great deal of information; on the other hand it might reveal very little; for, while it is very painful to say so, the popular impression that it is possible to reconstruct an animal from a single bone, or tell its size and habits from a tooth is but partially correct, and sometimes "the eminent scientist" has come to grief even with a great many bones at his disposal. Did not one of the ablest anatomists describe and figure the hip-bones of a Dinosaur as its shoulder-blade, and another, equally able, reconstruct a reptile "hind side before," placing the head on the tail! This certainly sounds absurd enough; but just as absurd mistakes are made by men in other walks of life, often with far more deplorable results.

Before pa.s.sing to the restoration of the exterior of animals it may be well to say something of the manner in which the skeleton of an extinct animal may be reconstructed and the meaning of its various parts interpreted. For the adjustment of the muscles is dependent on the structure of the skeleton, and putting on the muscles means blocking out the form, details of external appearance being supplied by the skin and its accessories of hair, scales, or horns. Let us suppose in the present instance that we are dealing with one of the great reptiles known as Triceratops whose remains are among the treasures of the National Museum at Was.h.i.+ngton, for the reconstruction of the big beast well ill.u.s.trates the methods of the palaeontologist and also the troubles by which he is beset. Moreover, this is not a purely imaginary case, but one that is very real, for the skeleton of this animal which was shown at Buffalo was restored in papier-mache in exactly the manner indicated. We have a goodly number of bones, but by no means an entire skeleton, and yet we wish to complete the skeleton and incidentally to form some idea of the creature's habits. Now we can interpret the past only by a knowledge of the present, and it is by carefully studying the skeletons of the animals of to-day that we can learn to read the meaning of the symbols of bones left by the animals of a million yesterdays. Thus we find that certain characters distinguish the bone of a mammal from that of a bird, a reptile, or a fish, and these in turn from one another, and this const.i.tutes the A B C of comparative anatomy. And, in a like manner, the bones of the various divisions of these main groups have to a greater or less extent their own distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics, so that by first comparing the bones of extinct animals with those of creatures that are now living we are enabled to recognize their nearest existing relative, and then by comparing them with one another we learn the relations they bore in the ancient world. But it must be borne in mind that some of the early beasts were so very different from those of to-day that until pretty much their entire structure was known there was nothing with which to compare odd bones. Had but a single incomplete specimen of Triceratops come to light we should be very much in the dark concerning him; and although remains of some thirty individuals have been discovered, these have been so imperfect that we are very far from having all the information we need. A great part of the head, with its formidable looking horns, is present, and although the nose is gone, we know from other specimens that it, too, was armed with a k.n.o.b, or horn, and that the skull ended in a beak, something like that of a snapping turtle, though formed by a separate and extra bone; similarly the end of the lower jaw is lacking, but we may be pretty certain that it ended in a beak, to match that of the skull. The large leg-bones of our specimen are mostly represented, for these being among the more solid parts of the skeleton are more frequently preserved than any others, and though some are from one side and some from another, this matters not. If the hind legs were disproportionately long it would indicate that our animal often or habitually walked erect, but as there is only difference enough between the fore and hind limbs to enable Triceratops to browse comfortably from the ground we would naturally place him on all fours, even were the skull not so large as to make the creature too top-heavy for any other mode of locomotion. Were the limbs very small in comparison with the other bones, it would obviously mean that their owner pa.s.sed his life in the water. For a skeleton has a twofold meaning, it is the best, the most enduring, testimony we have as to an animal's place in nature and the relations.h.i.+ps it sustains to the creatures that lived with it, before it, and after it. More than this, a skeleton is the solution of a problem in mechanics, the problem of carrying a given weight and of adaptation to a given mode of life. Thus the skeleton varies according as a creature dwells on land, in the water, or in the air, and according as it feeds on gra.s.s or preys upon its fellows.

And so the mechanics of a skeleton afford us a clew to the habits of the living animal. Something, too, may be gathered from the structure of the leg-bones, for solid bones mean either a sluggish animal or a creature of more or less aquatic habits, while hollow bones emphatically declare a land animal, and an active one at that; and this, in the case of the Dinosaurs, hints at predatory habits, the ability to catch and eat their defenceless and more sluggish brethren. A claw, or, better yet, a tooth, may confirm or refute this hint; for a blunt claw could not be used in tearing prey limb from limb, nor would a double-edged tooth, made for rending flesh, serve for champing gra.s.s.

But few bones of the feet, and especially the fore feet, are present, these smaller parts of the skeleton having been washed away before the ponderous frame was buried in the sand, and the best that can be done is to follow the law of probabilities and put three toes on the hind foot and five on the fore, two of these last without claws. The single blunt round claw among our bones shows, as do the teeth, that Triceratops was herbivorous; it also pointed a little downward, and this tells that in the living animal the sole of the foot was a thick, soft pad, somewhat as it is in the elephant and rhinoceros, and that the toes were not entirely free from one another. There are less than a dozen vertebrae and still fewer ribs, besides half a barrelful of pieces, from which to reconstruct a backbone twenty feet long. That the ribs are part from one side and part from another matters no more than it did in the case of the leg-bones; but the backbone presents a more difficult problem, since the pieces are not like so many checkers--all made after one pattern--but each has an individuality of its own. The total number of vertebrae must be guessed at (perhaps it would sound better to say estimated, but it really means the same), and knowing that some sections are from the front part of the vertebral column and some from the back, we must fill in the gaps as best we may. The ribs offer a little aid in this task, giving certain details of the vertebrae, while those in turn tell something about the adjoining parts of the ribs. We finish our Triceratops with a tail of moderate length, as indicated by the rapid taper of the few vertebrae available, and from these we gather, too, that in life the tail was round, and not flattened, and that it neither served for swimming nor for a balancing pole. And so, little by little, have been pieced together the fragments from which we have derived our knowledge of the past, and thus has the palaeontologist read the riddles of the rocks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 26.--Triceratops, He of the Three-horned Face. _From a statuette by Charles R. Knight._]

To make these dry bones live again, to clothe them with flesh and reconstruct the creature as he was or may have been in life, is, to be honest, very largely guesswork, though to make a guess that shall come anywhere near the mark not only demands a thorough knowledge of anatomy--for the basis of all restoration must be the skeleton--but calls for more than a pa.s.sing acquaintance with the external appearance of living animals. And while there is nothing in the bones to tell how an animal is, or was, clad, they will at least show to what group the creature belonged, and, that known, there are certain probabilities in the case. A bird, for example, would certainly be clad in feathers.

Going a little farther, we might be pretty sure that the feathers of a water-fowl would be thick and close; those of strictly terrestrial birds, such as the ostrich and other flightless forms, lax and long.

These as general propositions; of course, in special cases, one might easily come to grief, as in dealing with birds like penguins, which are particularly adapted for an aquatic life, and have the feathers highly modified. These birds depend upon their fat, and not on their feathers, for warmth, and so their feathers have become a sort of cross between scales and hairs. Hair and fur belong to mammals only, although these creatures show much variety in their outer covering. The thoroughly marine whales have discarded furs and adopted a smooth and slippery skin,[9] well adapted to movement through the water, relying for warmth on a thick unders.h.i.+rt of blubber. The earless seals that pa.s.s much of their time on the ice have just enough hair to keep them from absolute contact with it, warmth again being provided for by blubber. The fur seals, which for several months in the year dwell largely on land, have a coat of fur and hair, although warmth is mostly furnished, or rather kept in, by fat.

[9] _The reader is warned that this is a mere figure of speech, for, of course, the process of adaptation to surroundings is pa.s.sive, not active, although there is a most unfortunate tendency among writers on evolution, and particularly on mimicry, to speak of it as active. The writer believes that no animal in the first stages of mimicry, consciously mimics or endeavors to resemble another animal or any part of its surroundings, but a habit at first accidental may in time become more or less conscious._

No reptile, therefore, would be covered with feathers, neither, judging from those we know to-day, would they be clad in fur or hair; but, such coverings being barred out, there remain a great variety of plates and scales to choose from. Folds and frills, crests and dewlaps, like beauty, are but skin deep, and, being thus superficial, ordinarily leave no trace of their former presence, and in respect to them the reconstructor must trust to his imagination, with the law of probabilities as a check rein to his fancy. This law would tell us that such ornaments must not be so placed as to be in the way, and that while there would be a possibility--one might even say probability--of the great, short-headed, iguana-like Dinosaurs having dewlaps, that there would be no great likelihood of their possessing ruffs such as that of the Australian Chlamydosaurus (mantled lizard) to flap about their ears.

Even Stegosaurus, with his bizarre array of great plates and spines, kept them on his back, out of the way. Such festal ornamentation would, however, more likely be found in small, active creatures, the larger beasts contenting themselves with plates and folds.

Spines and plates usually leave some trace of their existence, for they consist of a super-structure of skin or horn, built on a foundation of bone; and while even horn decomposes too quickly to "petrify," the bone will become fossilized and changed into enduring stone. But while this affords a pretty sure guide to the general shape of the investing horn, it does not give all the details, and there may have been ridges and furrows and sculpturing that we know not of.

Knowing, then, what the probabilities are, we have some guide to the character of the covering that should be placed on an animal, and if we may not be sure as to what should be done, we may be pretty certain what should not.

For example, to depict a Dinosaur with smooth, rubbery hide walking about on dry land would be to violate the probabilities, for only such exclusively aquatic creatures as the whales among mammals, and the salamanders among batrachians, are clothed in smooth, s.h.i.+ny skin. There might, however, be reason to suspect that a creature largely aquatic in its habits did occasionally venture on land, as, for instance, when vertebrae that seem illy adapted for carrying the weight of a land animal are found in company with huge limb-bones and ma.s.sive feet we may feel reasonably certain that their owner pa.s.sed at least a portion of his time on _terra firma_.

So much for the probabilities as to the covering of animals known to us only by their fossil remains; but it is often possible to go beyond this, and to state certainly how they were clad. For while the chances are small that any trace of the covering of an extinct animal, other than bony plates, will be preserved, Nature does now and then seem to have relented, and occasionally some animal settled to rest where it was so quickly and quietly covered with fine mud that the impression of small scales, feathers, or even smooth skin, was preserved; curiously enough, there seems to be scarcely any record of the imprint of hair.

Then, too, it is to be remembered that while the chances were very much against such preservation, in the thousands or millions of times creatures died the millionth chance might come uppermost.

Silhouettes of those marine reptiles, the Ichthyosaurs, have been found, probably made by the slow carbonization of animal matter, showing not only the form of the body and tail, but revealing the existence of an unsuspected back fin. And yet these animals were apparently clad in a skin as thin and smooth as that of a whale. Impressions of feathers were known long before the discovery of Archaeopteryx; a few have been found in the Green River and Florissant shales of Wyoming, and a Hesperornis in the collection of the State University of Kansas shows traces of the existence of long, soft feathers on the legs and very clear imprints of the scales and reticulated skin that covered the tarsus. From the Chalk of Kansas, too, came the example of Tylosaur, showing that the back of this animal was decorated with the crest shown in Mr. Knight's restoration, one not unlike that of the modern iguana. From the Laramie sandstone of Montana Mr. Hatcher and Mr. Butler have obtained the impressions of portions of the skin of the great Dinosaur, Thespesius, which show that the covering of this animal consisted largely, if not entirely, of small, irregularly hexagonal h.o.r.n.y scutes, slightly thickened in the centre. The quarries of lithographic stone at Solenhofen have yielded a few specimens of flying reptiles, pterodactyls, which not only verify the correctness of the inference that these creatures possessed membranous wings, like the bats, but show the exact shape, and it was sometimes very curious, of this membrane.

And each and all of these wonderfully preserved specimens serve both to check and guide the restorer in his task of clothing the animal as it was in life.

And all this help is needed, for it is an easy matter to make a wide-sweeping deduction, apparently resting on a good basis of fact, and yet erroneous. Remains of the Mammoth and Woolly Rhinoceros, found in Siberia and Northern Europe, were thought to indicate that at the period when these animals lived the climate was mild, a very natural inference, since the elephants and rhinoceroses we now know are all inhabitants of tropical climes. But the discovery of more or less complete specimens makes it evident that the climate was not particularly mild; the animals were simply adapted to it; instead of being naked like their modern relatives, they were dressed for the climate in a woolly covering. We think of the tiger as prowling through the jungles of India, but he ranges so far north that in some localities this beast preys upon reindeer, which are among the most northern of large mammals, and there the tiger is clad in fairly thick fur.

When we come to coloring a reconstructed animal we have absolutely no guide, unless we a.s.sume that the larger a creature the more soberly will it be colored. The great land animals of to-day, the elephant and rhinoceros, to say nothing of the aquatic hippopotamus, are very dully colored, and while this sombre coloration is to-day a protection, rendering these animals less easily seen by man than they otherwise would be, yet at the time this color was developing man was not nor were there enemies sufficiently formidable to menace the race of elephantine creatures.

For where mere size furnishes sufficient protection one would hardly expect to find protective coloration as well, unless indeed a creature preyed upon others, when it might be advantageous to enable a predatory animal to steal upon its prey.

Color often exists (or is supposed to) as a s.e.xual characteristic, to render the male of a species attractive to, or readily recognizable by, the female, but in the case of large animals mere size is quite enough to render them conspicuous, and possibly this may be one of the factors in the dull coloration of large animals.

So while a green and yellow Triceratops would undoubtedly have been a conspicuous feature in the Cretaceous landscape, from what we know of existing animals it seems best to curb our fancy and, so far as large Dinosaurs are concerned, employ the colors of a Rembrandt rather than those of a sign painter.

Aids, or at least hints, to the coloration of extinct animals are to be found in the coloration of the young of various living species, for as the changes undergone by the embryo are in a measure an epitome of the changes undergone by a species during its evolution, so the brief color phases or markings of the young are considered to represent the ordinary coloring of distant ancestors. Young thrushes are spotted, young ostriches and grebes are irregularly striped, young lions are spotted, and in restoring the early horse, or Hyracothere, Professor Osborn had the animal represented as faintly striped, for the reason that zebras, the wild horses of to-day, are striped, and because the a.s.s, which is a primitive type of horse, is striped over the shoulders, these being hints that the earlier horse-like forms were also striped.

Thus just as the skeleton of a Dinosaur may be a composite structure, made up of the bones of a dozen individuals, and these in turn mosaics of many fragments, so may the semblance of the living animal be based on a fact, pieced out with a probability and completed by a bit of theory.

_REFERENCES_

_There is a large series of restorations of extinct animals, prepared by Mr. Charles R. Knight, under the direction of Professor Osborn, in the Hall of Palaeontology of the American Museum of Natural History, and these are later to be reproduced and issued in portfolio form._

_Should the reader visit Princeton, he may see in the museum there a number of B. Waterhouse Hawkins's creations--creations is the proper word--which are of interest as examples of the early work in this line._

_The "Report of the Smithsonian Inst.i.tution for 1900" contains an article on "The Restoration of Extinct Animals," pages 479-492, which includes a number of plates showing the progress that has been made in this direction._

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 27.--A Hint of Buried Treasures.]

VIII

FEATHERED GIANTS

_"There were giants in the earth in those days."_

Nearly every group of animals has its giants, its species which tower above their fellows as Goliath of Gath stood head and shoulders above the Philistine hosts; and while some of these are giants only in comparison with their fellows, belonging to families whose members are short of stature, others are sufficiently great to be called giants under any circ.u.mstances. Some of these giants live to-day, some have but recently pa.s.sed away, and some ceased to be long ages before man trod this earth. The most gigantic of mammals--the whales--still survive, and the elephant of to-day suffers but little in comparison with the mammoth of yesterday; the monstrous Dinosaurs, greatest of all reptiles--greatest, in fact, of all animals that have walked the earth--flourished thousands upon thousands of years ago. As for birds, some of the giants among them are still living, some existed long geologic periods ago, and a few have so recently vanished from the scene that their memory still lingers amid the haze of tradition. The best known among these, as well as the most recent in point of time, are the Moas of New Zealand, first brought to notice by the Rev. W. Colenso, later on Bishop of New Zealand, one of the many missionaries to whom Science is under obligations. Early in 1838, Bishop Colenso, while on a missionary visit to the East Cape region, heard from the natives of Waiapu tales of a monstrous bird, called Moa, having the head of a man, that inhabited the mountain-side some eighty miles away. This mighty bird, the last of his race, was said to be attended by two equally huge lizards that kept guard while he slept, and on the approach of man wakened the Moa, who immediately rushed upon the intruders and trampled them to death. None of the Maoris had seen this bird, but they had seen and somewhat irreverently used for making parts of their fis.h.i.+ng tackle, bones of its extinct relatives, and these bones they declared to be as large as those of an ox.

About the same time another missionary, the Rev. Richard Taylor, found a bone ascribed to the Moa, and met with a very similar tradition among the natives of a near-by district, only, as the foot of the rainbow moves away as we move toward it, in his case the bird was said to dwell in quite a different locality from that given by the natives of East Cape. While, however, the Maoris were certain that the Moa still lived, and to doubt its existence was little short of a crime, no one had actually seen it, and as time went on and the bird still remained unseen by any explorer, hope became doubt and doubt certainty, until it even became a mooted question whether such a bird had existed within the past ten centuries, to say nothing of having lived within the memory of man.

But if we do not know the living birds, their remains are scattered broadcast over hillside and plain, concealed in caves, buried in the mud of swamps, and from these we gain a good idea of their size and structure, while chance has even made it possible to know something of their color and general appearance. This chance was the discovery of a few specimens, preserved in exceptionally dry caves on the South Island, which not only had some of the bones still united by ligaments, but patches of skin clinging to the bones, and bearing numerous feathers of a chestnut color tipped with white. These small, straggling, rusty feathers are not much to look at, but when we reflect that they have been preserved for centuries without any care whatever, while the buffalo bugs have devoured our best Smyrna rugs in spite of all possible precautions, our respect for them increases.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 28.--Relics of the Moa.]

From the bones we learn that there were a great many kinds of Moas, twenty at least, ranging in size from those little larger than a turkey to that giant among giants, _Dinornis maximus_, which stood at least ten feet high,[10] or two feet higher than the largest ostrich, and may well claim the distinction of being the tallest of all known birds. We also learn from the bones that not only were the Moas flightless, but that many of them were absolutely wingless, being devoid even of such vestiges of wings as we find in the Ca.s.sowary or Apteryx. But if Nature deprived these birds of wings, she made ample amends in the matter of legs, those of some species, the Elephant-footed Moa, _Pachyornis elephantopus_, for example, being so ma.s.sively built as to cause one to wonder what the owner used them for, although the generally accepted theory is that they were used for scratching up the roots of ferns on which the Moas are believed to have fed. And if a blow from an irate ostrich is sufficient to fell a man, what must have been the kicking power of an able-bodied Moa? Beside this bird the ostrich would appear as slim and graceful as a gazelle beside a prize ox.

[10] _The height of the Moas, and even of some species of aepyornis, is often stated to be twelve or fourteen feet, but such a height can only be obtained by placing the skeleton in a wholly unnatural att.i.tude._

The Moas were confined to New Zealand, some species inhabiting the North Island, some the South, very few being common to both, and from these peculiarities of distribution geologists deduce that at some early period in the history of the earth the two islands formed one, that later on the land subsided, leaving the islands separated by a strait, and that since this subsidence there has been sufficient time for the development of the species peculiar to each island. Although Moas were still numerous when man made his appearance in this part of the world, the large deposits of their bones indicate that they were on the wane, and that natural causes had already reduced the feathered population of these islands. A glacial period is believed to have wrought their destruction, and in one great mora.s.s, abounding in springs, their bones occur in such enormous numbers, layer upon layer, that it is thought the birds sought the place where the flowing springs might afford their feet at least some respite from the biting cold, and there perished miserably by thousands.

What Nature spared man finished, and legends of Moa hunts and Moa feasts still lingered among the Maoris when the white man came and began in turn the extermination of the Maori. The theory has been advanced, with much to support it, that the big birds were eaten off the face of the earth by an earlier race than the Maoris, and that after the extirpation of the Moas the craving for flesh naturally led to cannibalism. But by whomsoever the destruction was wrought, the result was the same, the habitat of these feathered giants knew them no longer, while mult.i.tudes of charred bones, interspersed with fragments of egg-sh.e.l.ls, bear testimony to former barbaric feasts.

It is a far cry from New Zealand to Madagascar, but thither must we go, for that island was, pity we cannot say is, inhabited by a race of giant birds from whose eggs it has been thought may have been hatched the Roc of Sindbad. Arabian tales, as we all know, locate the Roc either in Madagascar or in some adjacent island to the north and east, and it is far from unlikely that legends of the aepyornis, backed by the substantial proof of its enormous eggs, may have been the slight foundation of fact whereon the story-teller erected his structure of fiction. True, the Roc of fable was a gigantic bird of prey capable of bearing away an elephant in its talons, while the aepyornis has shed its wings and shrunk to dimensions little larger than an ostrich, but this is the inevitable result of closer acquaintance and the application of a two-foot rule.

Like the Moa the aepyornis seems to have lived in tradition long after it became extinct, for a French history of Madagascar, published as early as 1658 makes mention of a large bird, or kind of ostrich, said to inhabit the southern end of the island. Still, in spite of bones having been found that bear evident traces of the handiwork of man, it is possible that this and other reports were due to the obvious necessity of having some bird to account for the presence of the eggs.

The actual introduction of the aepyornis to science took place in 1834, when a French traveller sent Jules Verreaux, the ornithologist, a sketch of a huge egg, saying that he had seen two of that size, one sawed in twain to make bowls, the other, traversed by a stick, serving in the preparation of rice uses somewhat in contrast with the proverbial fragility of egg-sh.e.l.ls. A little later another traveller procured some fragments of egg-sh.e.l.ls, but it was not until 1851 that any entire eggs were obtained, when two were secured, and with a few bones sent to France, where Geoffroy St. Hilaire bestowed upon them the name of _aepyornis maximus_ (the greatest lofty bird). Maximus the eggs remain, for they still hold the record for size; but so far as the bird that is supposed to have laid them is concerned, the name was a little premature, for other and larger species subsequently came to hand.

Between the aepyornithes and the Moas Science has had a hard time, for the supply of big words was not large enough to go around, and some had to do duty twice. In the way of generic names we have Dinornis, terrible bird; aepyornis, high bird; Pachyornis, stout bird; and Brontornis, thunder bird, while for specific names there are robustus, maximus, t.i.tan; gravis, heavy; immanis, enormous; cra.s.sus, stout; ingens, great; and elephantopus, elephant-footed--truly a goodly array of large-sounding words. But to return to the big eggs! Usually we look upon those of the ostrich as pretty large, but an ostrich egg measures 4-1/2 by 6 inches, while that of the aepyornis is 9 by 13 inches; or, to put it another way, it would hold the contents of six ostrichs' eggs, or one hundred and forty-eight hens' eggs, or thirty thousand humming birds' eggs; and while this is very much smaller than a waterb.u.t.t, it is still as large as a bucket, and one or two such eggs might suffice to make an omelet for Gargantua himself.